The God King and I
by Nymsuuda
Summary: (Alternate events) After being told over and over again that she is not up to the task of fighting with Ichigo and his team, Orihime arrives in Hueco Mundo to train with the Arrancar. She resists on principle, but after finding out the depth of Aizen's interest in her power, she questions where her loyalties-and duties-truly lie. (A Dark Mentor story) AizenxOrihime, AiHime
1. Chapter 1

There was only ever moonlight here. And not even proper moonlight: it didn't wax or wane or even bother traveling across the coal black sky. It just shone through the bars of Orihime's window, as if it had nothing better to do than to mock her like a big, tilted Cheshire-cat grin.

Her sense of time had gone stiff as a piece of overchewed gum, and had begun snapping off and leaving huge gaps in continuity. She felt like she'd been here a day; she felt like she'd been here forever. She felt like her life in the World of the Living had been the dream of the night before, and was slipping further away each time she reached for a solid memory, just to assure herself that it had really happened. The only thing or sensation she could really trust at this point was her hunger—she must not have eaten since she got here, because it felt like her stomach was burning itself down in protest.

After what might have been several centuries, she turned away from the window to find Ulquiorra standing in her always-open doorway. She yelped, which didn't seem to bother him—he might have been a statue, the way those hooded green cat-eyes stared. His hands didn't leave his pockets. If the moon was the Cheshire cat's grin, Ulquiorra wore its eyes.

"Um," Orihime started, her hands clenched and white-knuckled in the pale, unfamiliar fabric of her new clothes, "did you—do you need something?"

Ulquiorra's only response was a single slow, toweringly unimpressed blink. Her cheeks heated up. What are you, a waitress? She squashed the tiny, indignant voice like she always did. No, she was a hostage. Or a prisoner of war, or something. Either way, she was surrounded by enemies, and it wouldn't do to be anything but as calm as she ever was. Or no, she was never calm—in fact, she felt not so different from usual, which was to say: in a state of overstimulated panic. So…as meek as usual, then?

Ulquiorra—now, he was calm—seemed resigned to standing there staring at her—or at something between the tip of his impossibly straight nose and her—for the rest of the day, but Orihime's stomach chose that moment to growl. Or maybe growl wasn't the right word either: the sound was more of long, anguished groan, something like the sound a child might make during a tantrum, that had time to bounce once off the hard stone walls of the spartan bedroom before it finally went silent.

Orihime's hands were at her stomach now, grabbing at it as if to impress upon it, also like a tantrumming child, just how embarrassing that little scene had been, and could it perhaps, never do that again? Please? She would give it all the weird curry donuts and wasabi-churro icecreams it wanted later, if it would please just not.

On the other side of the room, Ulquiorra appeared about as unflapped as he had when he had cut down Orihime's two shinigami guides the day (or maybe year?) before. Nothing personal, all business. She suspected that it had been all business, nothing personal, as well as when he'd let her heal them and given her those few hours of reprieve. She probably didn't need to feel embarrassed, she hushed herself—he probably didn't even know or care that empty bellies did things like that.

But his eyes cut down to her stomach abruptly, so abruptly that she flinched. He looked back up at her face, and waited. When she didn't respond, he finally raised his eyebrows, or at least the one not covered by the partial Hollow mask. The effect was like watching a doll—one of those creepy Western-style dolls that had no use but to sit endlessly on a shelf and gather dust—move under its own power. Just that small mark of attention possessed its own little horror. She froze, too terrified to move, until finally—at last—Ulquiorra turned and left. She didn't move until his quiet footfalls finally faded away. Then she fell on her hard bed and wept herself to sleep.

She still hadn't eaten when, an unknowable time later, Ulquiorra came to fetch her. This time he didn't stall or stare, though he didn't exactly hurry either. She was curled up on her bed where she had fainted some time before—when he approached, but his unhinged Reiatsu shook her awake as he appeared at the door. He informed her that she'd been summoned. She didn't have to ask by whom. Not that she had the best handle on the Arrancar/Espada/soon-to-be-godking hierarchy yet, but she at least had a definite feeling Ulquiorra wouldn't play errand boy for just anybody.

Orihime trailed after him, feet dragging and head spinning. She kept her drooping eyes fixed on the slightly bobbing single horn of Ulquiorra's half-mask. Her stomach growled again, but this time she couldn't care enough to even paw at it. She'd gone past hunger now and into near delirium. She hurt all over, and her thoughts were lost in a fog. After another century or two of endless branching corridors and hunger-benumbed panic, they arrived at a high doubledoor. It hitched a few inches open as they approached, and Ulquiorra pushed unwarily past it. Orihime had expected him to bow, or to knock, or to at least wait for some kind of subordinate-requesting-entry-style pomp. She didn't know about the rest of Hueco Mundo, but Las Noches struck her as…pompish? Was that even a word? Anyway, it was a place where people seemed to really value their pomp.

Beyond the door stood a balcony similar to the one where she'd seen the Hogyoku a few days before. Hueco Mundo didn't have any obvious weather: outside it was the same clammy chill as it was indoors, though the thin blue splash of the Kido-lanterns ended at the threshold. Outside, the moonlight felt soft and dry on her skin.

A simple table and two chairs stood a few steps ahead, and something—an alarmingly bright splash of primary colors and texture in the smooth, barren setting—sat in the middle of the table. A tantazlizingly savory smell rose from it.

"Welcome," said a deep voice behind her. The chill returned. Ulquiorra had stopped where the lantern-light faded—she could still see his silhouette in the doorway from the corner of her eye—and fabric brushed her sleeve as a tall figure passed by. Aizen turned, that one lock of messy brown hair tickling the bridge of his nose, and gestured for her to take the seat closest to her at the small table. She must have looked as stricken as she felt, because eventually Ulquiorra's hard, cold hand grasped her elbow, and she was half-pulled, half-pushed the last few steps to the table. She almost leaned into his touch—even if it wasn't tender, or particularly comforting in any way, it was at least too alien to fear properly. Her fear of Aizen—a human, or a human soul, at least—was much more clear and present in her mind; his possible intentions too easy to guess, or at least project. Ulquiorra was still a blank page, an unwritten sentence, whereas Aizen had already shown his true colors, and then some.

She persuaded her knees to bend, and in a moment she was sitting rigidly upright on the hard stone chair. At this distance, both to Aizen and the tasty-smelling thing on the table, Orihime's attention was thoroughly divided. Aizen didn't appear to mind. A small smile quirked one corner of his mouth as she stared at what she now realized was a paper sack—from none other than the weird European-American-Thai fusion fastfood joint that she had eaten at many times in Karakura. All of her few friends had hated it, though, and she'd stopped going once she got into highschool. The brightly-colored paper bag with its mustachioed cartoon mascot looked unreal, almost profane, in this bleak, somber stone-and-sand world. She wondered, with a sharp, hunger-fueled pang of paranoia, whether Aizen was using his zanpakuto's bizarre power to show her an illusion.

"Would you like some?" Aizen asked as he took his seat opposite her. Orihime could only stare at him. "It must be some time since you ate," he prompted.

"Is it—" Orihime licked her dry lips. "Is it real?"

Aizen laughed, a soft chuckle that was neither kind nor unkind. "Yes, it's real and fresh and edible. Ulquiorra retrieved it less than an hour ago from the World of the Living."

Orihime still didn't move, but in the back of her mind she began sketching an impossible image of Ulquiorra standing placidly in line at the dingy little restaurant while the staff snuck glances and patrons tried not to flee too obviously.

"I'm told it was one of your favorites once, but it seems you haven't been in some time. I hope it's still to your liking?" He touched the shiny paper receipt stapled to the bag and read, "Three orders of green curry chili fries with beef and a Thai iced tea with sweetened condensed goat's milk." His eyebrows furrowed. "Maybe I should say 'presumably edible.'"

Orihime's hand moved, practically shot forward, to grab the bag. Her stomach was controlling her now, but she yelped as her knuckles immediately cracked against an invisible barrier. Her eyes flicked back to Aizen, who was watching her neutrally, unconcerned. She tried again—and hit the barrier again. This time, it gave her a shock.

"Ow!" she barked. It was a very un-Hime sound, much of her mind was telling her, and and even less-Hime way to behave, but that wasn't the part of her mind in control right now. "You said I could—" she started, teeth bared, but when Aizen quirked an eyebrow, she faltered, horrified with herself.

"Go on," Aizen said, not visibly bothered by her outburst. "Tell me. Do you want to eat or don't you?"

Orihime sat silent. Everything was a game to Aizen—she'd overheard Ulquiorra say as much, and she believed it. But she didn't know the rules, or even how to play along. She fell back on habit, and waved her hands meekly.

"I'm fine," she said and shook her head as politely as she could manage, but her voice hitched weakly as she said it.

Aizen continued to watch her. "Are you?" he asked. "It's been a while for me, but I'm sure human…necessities…can't have changed so much since my time." He leaned forward, eyes fixed on hers. Orihime felt like a sparrow hypnotised by a snake's gaze—her thoughts were reduced to an unending loop of wondering when that swaying head would strike. Now…ok, now…no, maybe…now…

"Orihime," he said directly, and she flinched. "Do you, or do you not, need to eat?"

Oh. So that was it. Orihime didn't even grind her teeth. If he wanted her to grovel, what, really, could she do but go along with it? It was familiar territory for her, anyway. She was almost relieved. "If you would allow me to eat, Lord Aizen, I would be most—"

"You were right, Ulquiorra," Aizen said over her. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "This is going to take some doing."

Orihime blinked. Behind her, Ulquiorra's silence deepened. Aizen nodded, and Ulquiorra snapped his fingers.

The bag caught fire and was incinerated in an instant—its precious contents burned more slowly, but they were ruined at once. Containers bubbled and melted as sweet-smelling tea splashed the stone tabletop—the smell of meat and sauce mingled with the acrid scent of burning plastic.

Orihime's seat fell backward as she jumped to her feet, and something, or several somethings, flashed in the air around her. A violent little spark arced away from her to shear through the hard barrier between her and the food—she felt it resist, then give away, as Tsubaki punched clean through it. Two more lights crossed to form a rejection field over the rapidly charring remains of her meal. Time rewound beneath it, and almost instantly, the food inside was again fresh and edible.

She threw another shield between her and Aizen as she grabbed at the payload one last time. She almost cried as her fingers closed on the rustling paper bag. Whatever, she thought as she dipped her hand inside and felt the warm, squishy chili-fries and the icecold tea. If he was going to kill her, she at least wasn't dying on an empty stomach.

She didn't look up as she crammed spice and starch and protein into her aching, starving body. Aizen and Ulquiorra were silent, though she had a feeling Ulquiorra had long since averted his eyes in abject revulsion. She'd care later, maybe, but not yet. She felt Aizen still watching her, but she didn't look back at him until she'd finished the first two orders of fries and had to either slow down or throw up. She calmed herself, wiped her hands on the bag—the shop had never included paper napkins in their takeout orders and it looked like nothing had changed—and sipped primly at the extra sweet and creamy tea. She sniffled a little around the wide straw. The sweetness was like a cool hand on the forehead of her fevered tempers.

Aizen tapped twice on the barrier between them with a fingernail—once assessingly, and then a second time to shatter it with a high, tinkling noise like a dropped champagne flute. Baigon and Lily yelped in alarm and zipped back to hide in Orihime's hair. Orihime put her cup down, fixed one last longing look on the untouched third order of fries, and squared her shoulders. She was ready…but Aizen only nodded.

"That," he said approvingly, and waved for Ulquiorra to approach, "is much more like it. Though, for the record, I would have been equally satisfied with a less dramatic approach."

This time Ulquiorra didn't touch her, only tugged at her chair to indicate she should stand or be dumped out of it. Aizen rose and swept away to the other side of the balcony while she watched, numb with confused relief.

Orihime turned to follow Ulquiorra back into the corridor, but at the last second, dashed back to the table to grab the remaining food and stuff it into the bag. She clutched her tea and the crumpled, still-warm bag to her like a precious child, and stalked stiffly after Ulquiorra, who bore this all without comment.

Before he left her standing, still shellshocked, in her bedroom, he turned his melancholy face on her just long enough to offer some advice. Or maybe it was a command.

"Next time you want to eat," he said, resigned, "say so."


	2. Chapter 2

Orihime slept like the dead. When she finally woke, she devoured the long-cold remains of her curry fries, which she had stowed in the bedside table drawer, afraid that Ulquiorra or one of the others would whisk them away like they had her personal clothes. Not for the first time, she missed her school sweater—the damp stony chill of the air here never completely went away, even under the milk-white coverlet on her bed. The fabric would have smelled like home, and maybe…a little like Ichigo's room…

But she learned pretty quickly to steer her mind away from Ichigo, as well as Rukia or Tatsuki. Now that she was fed and apparently not in imminent danger of starving to death anytime soon, her mind returned to them over and over. It was like worrying a loose tooth with her tongue. She hadn't missed anyone so fiercely since her brother died. It hurt to poke at the memory of them, and particularly the one of saying goodbye to Ichigo, but it hurt to leave it alone, too, and if one kind of hurt was more bearable than the other, she couldn't tell which one it was.

She slept for a long time, long enough that her joints were stiff and aching when she finally woke. She dressed gingerly on the other side of her bed, throwing shifty glances at the doorless entrance to her room. Not that she expected that the Espada had so little to do that they'd stoop to peeping on a human girl, she thought—she just didn't want to be caught unawares.

Why do you feel the need to jump to the defense of the people who kidnapped and starved you? an obnoxiously reasonable voice in her head demanded. Not to mention they're literally excited about trying to kill your friends. She squashed it. Getting angry was pointless…wasn't it?

"If you're done," a voice said from the door, and Orihime spun around, "Lord Aizen is waiting."

Between one furtive glance and the next while she pulled on her skirt, Ulquiorra had appeared in the hallway. He stood in his usual spot just outside the room, like it pained him to step inside. Not that she minded. Doors meant nothing when it came to power like he and the other Arrancars weilded—but it would have been nice to have a shade—or even the false appearance—of privacy.

More to the point, she clearly wasn't done. Her tunic-like top and wide belt were still draped over the side of the bed, and she was concealed only by a tight, sheer undergarment like a shift or a camisole. Apparently bras weren't a thing in Hueco Mundo, big surprise there. Ulquiorra stared at her, expression never changing, even when his eyes dropped to her chest. She felt herself turn bright, raging red before going a sickly cold as he stepped inside and walked toward her. She grasped at the bedclothes to cover herself, then threw a barrier between her and him. The bedclothes did nothing to make her feel better, nor did the barrier, which Ulquiorra shattered with barely a gesture.

But he stopped at the edge of the bed and didn't advance any further, only peered at her. Preparing analysis…or something?

She shook herself. What did it matter what his intentions were? Part of her wanted to shout at him to leave, but the larger part was frozen with fear.

He stopped staring at her eventually and turned away, impassive as ever, while she finished dressing in a rush and followed him out of the room and through another series of halls and stepped corridors. It was cold here, and getting colder, but her face burned the whole way. She kept her arms crossed over her chest, though Ulquiorra never once glanced in her direction.

They arrived a few minutes later at a huge, airy chamber with a round fireplace at the center. It was real fire this time—not Kido light or any other spectral fire-stuff—and Orihime almost ran to it. But Aizen stood beside it, his back to them as they came through the door. Orihime held herself in check and clasped her blue-nailed hands together in front of her stomach.

"So," Aizen said without turning around. "How'd it go?"

"No measurable change in behavior, Lord Aizen. Other than signs of evident human discomfort, which…" he trailed off. His eyes darted to Orihime and away. She stood as still as possible.

"Which, what?" Aizen prompted, and turned around to seat himself on the lip of the fireplace. He nodded to her—an I'll-be-with-you-in-a-moment glance—but looked back at Ulquiorra expectantly, like a teacher mid-pop-quiz.

"Which one could classify, given the ability of humans to communicate desires relatively efficiently through facial expression and gesture, as an improvement, if pressed."

"Only if pressed?"

"I do not consider it adequate, my Lord."

"Hm," Aizen murmured, and nodded again. "Nor do I." He flicked a hand in the direction of the door, and Ulquiorra retreated without another word.

Orihime had expected Aizen to question her next, though she had no idea what about, or to maybe demand another demonstration of her abilities. Instead, he only sat on the edge of the fireplace and waited. She hadn't moved from where she'd stopped at the door, almost fifteen feet away. The cold was seeping into her feet through her thin-soled slippers. She hugged herself as the temperature dropped more and more, and looked longingly at the cheery flames dancing in the fireplace.

She thought of the food they'd brought for her next—barriered and in flames—and how she'd had to…what? Earn it? There was no ability she could demonstrate here to bring the fire closer, or disperse the heat more evenly through the room.

Apparently Aizen had all day, because they stood like that for what felt like hours before Orihime asked temorously, "Can I assist you with something, Lord Aizen?"

"That remains to be seen," Aizen countered evenly. "In the meanwhile, tell me what you want."

"You summoned me, Lord Aizen."

"And you came. And now I'm asking—what do you want?"

She was lost. Was he asking why she was here, or…"Do you mean…in general?"

He nodded.

"I—," she began, but stopped. I want to go home. The answer was as obvious as it was pointless. Aizen seemed to read her thoughts.

"Start small. Walk, don't run."

A small want, then? "It is rather cold in here, Lord Aizen."

"And…" he waved one hand languidly to encourage her.

"And I would like to be…warm?"

"Would you?"

Despite everything, this was getting annoying. Nobody past the third grade thought these kind of gotcha games were clever. And that was coming from her.

"I want to be warm," she said, evening her tone.

"Alright," Aizen said, in a slighty infuriating now, was that so hard? tone.

They looked at each other for a while, and finally Orihime shivered and lost her nerve under the scrutiny.

"Am I dismissed, Lord Aizen?"

"Only if you really have to be told to take what you want, Miss Inoue."

"I—what?"

He raised his eyebrows expectantly but didn't repeat himself. She played his words back…she would be dismissed, which she gathered would not be a good thing, if she had to be told to do what she wanted. She wanted to leave, sure, but what she'd stated she wanted was to be warm.

She walked forward, knees shaking, and stopped a few feet from the fireplace. The air was dry here, and the rich crackling wood smelled like a summer night of fireworks with Tatsuki. Orihime's throat closed up, but she staunched the tears before they started.

"You very nearly lost that round, Miss Inoue," Aizen said, standing beside her now.

"Round?" she looked up at him and shuffled one step away as delicately as she could.

"Mhm. You lost the one with Ulquiorra earlier, it sounds like. It would have been a shame to forfeit two in a row."

"That was—you told him to do that? To—watch me?" She felt her face flush again as he nodded. At least he was watching the fire. She held her freezing hands out and crowded closer to the heat.

"Not in so many words. I told him to test your boundaries, and to see if you would defend them, then to bring you to me and report on his findings. Evidently, you failed."

Orihime ground her teeth. The Hime in her head told her this was another example of poor behavior, and she stopped.

"Do you disagree?"

He was facing her now, leaning one hip casually against the fireplace, arms crossed. She didn't have to look at him to know he was smiling.

"He is an Espada. Someone like me has no defense against him." She thought of the shattered barrier and shuddered. Luckily he was basically a robot, acting only on orders, or no telling how far he would have gone.

"If you're thinking of defense in only physical terms, then you're right. The percentile of beings that can stand up to Ulquiorra without being instantly crushed is vanishingly small. Currently, you are not in that percentile."

Something about his phrasing brought her up short, but before she could ask, he'd moved on.

"Regardless of the level of confrontation, or the means or severity or stakes, defense and attack both start with one thing: desire. Without a solid grasp of what you want, you've already lost the fight. Since you seem to be a bit ouf of practice with knowing what you want, to say the least, we have deliberately put you in several uncomfortable or compromising situations since you came here to guage your—you might call it, strength of personality." He chuckled appreciatively. "Given the research I had done on you, I'm not surprised food was the most effective ice-break."

Orihime stood stock still, rigid as a butterfly speared by a pin. She had been researched? She kept waiting for Aizen to get to the part where this was all about Ichigo, or Rukia and the Hogyoku, or maybe even Chad. About how he'd gone for the weakest link in the chain of his enemies, and had come up with her by default.

"If you'd done your research," she said, before she could stop herself, "you'd know that I'm the only one of my friends who can't fight."

"I'm going to correct your phrasing, Miss Inoue, and I must ask you not to deflect it this time." His words were neutral, but his tone grew sharp and severe. "You are the only one of your friends who is told not to, and who actually listens." His eyes cut her down to the quick.

"What?" she whispered.

Aizen conjured an image Orihime recognized at once. The field of dead bodies around the crater Yammy and Ulquiorra had created on their first advance into Karakura. She flinched away at the sight of Tatsuki's body, barely clinging to life, beside where Orihime herself stood with Chad in the image, but Aizen moved to stand behind her. He gripped her by the shoulders and held her in place. "Watch carefully."

The image became a film, playing from Ulquiorra's perspective. Orihime shuddered as she watched herself run toward the closest prone figure and prepare her rejection field.

"Leave him, Inoue," Chad's deep voice rumbled. "He is already dead." As the Origime of the film began to protest, Chad said again, more forcefully: "There's nothing you can do."

Orihime felt the shame and fear from that day wash over her again, burning her skin. The movie stalled and faded away, but Aizen did not release her.

"Tell me what happened there," he said softly. His breath shifted her hair around her clips.

"The man was dead," Orihime said miserably, reliving the moment in all its pain and fear. "The only thing I could do was get Tatsuki away."

"No," Aizen said. "That's what you were told, and it was what you believed. The reality of the situation was quite different. Your instincts told you to use your power. Your friend told you not to, that it wouldn't work. Which one did you obey?"

When Orihime didn't answer, Aizen turned her to face him. He tilted her chin up but she couldn't meet his eyes. "Which one, Orihime?"

"I—Chad was right, just like Mr. Urahara—" Tears began to spill onto Orihime's cheeks as guilt and shame clenched around her heart like a vice.

"Sado," Aizen said disgustedly, refusing to use the nickname, "knows even less about your power than he does his own, which is saying something. His simplicity of mentality is admirable only as long as he reserves such judgements for himself."

"Then—what are you saying? That I—?"

Aizen nodded gravely. "Yes, you could have saved him. And if anyone had had the sense to train you sooner, you could have saved all of them."

All of them…? Orihime's brain refused to process this. The regret was too deep—it would swallow her up.

"Urahara, on the other hand," Aizen continued, savoring , "is far more canny. He figured out your true potential shortly after you left Seireitei a few months ago, and he knew I'd notice. His mistake wasn't in attempting to take you off the playing board—that was a legitimate enough move in itself. It was in framing his true concerns in the only terms he thought you would understand: your evident self-loathing and your insecurity as part of a team. Ironically enough, if he'd been able to stop underestimating you and just trust you for even one minute, he would have seen that the better option was to simply tell you the truth."

"The truth?" Orihime looked up into Aizen's eyes for the first time, but she had no idea what he'd see looking back. She felt like a house being stripped down to its beams by a high wind. She could only hope it died down before it ripped up the foundation. "Tell me."

Aizen smiled. "The truth is that I'm not interested in your ability to mend the cuts and scrapes of some and poke small holes in others. I didn't borrow you as a way to fluster Ichigo or compromise his health. The truth is that at full strength, you'll either be my single greatest threat, or my most promising ally. You're here because I'm apparently the only one who intends to find out which you want to be."


	3. Chapter 3

After that, Orihime saw Ulquiorra most days for so-called 'tests of desire'—though the fact that she knew they were tests didn't do much to dispel her hesitation. It was almost always some minor discomfort, or, in a few cases, a major one. Oddly enough, the minor ones were the ones she tended to fail. She had learned to ask when she was hungry, but progress in other areas—requests for privacy, for adjustments in temperature, for clean clothes, for silence while she slept—never rose above a crawl. She couldn't fight the sense that if she made a fuss, she'd be essentially begging for worse.

In the major cases, Ulquiorra would appear out of the blue, advancing impassively and without interest into her personal space like an unstoppable natural force. Each time, her throat closed up, her heart raced, her brain fogged, she cringed away—more than once, she'd blacked out. Afterwards she would wake to find him either gone without a trace or standing, apparently unmoved, since she'd dropped.

But, as she realized after some time, the longer she waited to protest—as Aizen had promised, all she had to do was voice a 'want' and the test would end—the more the event escalated. Those were the times she fainted, though no matter how close Ulquiorra came, no matter how intense his Reiatsu grew, he never touched her. She had a feeling that Aizen must have given him very specific boundaries, but the threat in her mind never diminished, and the paralysis was not quick to fade.

Eventually, perhaps after some benchmark Orihime couldn't fathom had either been passed or simply abandoned, Ulquiorra began testing her combat and defense skills. Actual training was clearly not the point of the exercises: it was rare for him to say even two words from the time he arrived and began hurling Ceroes at her to the time he simply turned around and walked away, leaving Orihime frazzled and panting for breath amid a pile of rubble. Given his strength, Orihime had no doubt he was using the lightest hand he could, but the fear that the combat would intensify beyond all hope of defense usually kept her from pushing back. And regardless of how bizarre her surroundings became, no matter how unreadable Ulquiorra remained, she couldn't stop herself from viewing him as someone who might, in some small way, become a friend to her…she was still Orihime, after all, and Orihime didn't fight friends. She doubted even Aizen was capable of changing that about her.

Even her Santen Kesshun, when she managed to call them at all, had become disorganized. They never appeared for long, as if the strain on her conscience was too great, and for the short period they were visible, they turned fractious. Shields sizzled and popped, rejection fields winked out as soon as Orihime's mind wandered, and Tsubaki didn't even bother shouting at her, if he even showed up.

Presumably Aizen was keeping a tally somewhere of how often she passed or failed, or he was just watching her through Ulquiorra's weird eyeball mechanic as it happened, because every few days she was summoned and her progress briefly evaluated.

The larger part of her feared these times with Aizen, and she caught herself falling back on her meekest instincts to present the smallest target possible, but there was another, less familiar sense that was growing like a mushroom patch in the darkest, dustiest corner of her mind. If she had to name it, it would have been resentment, but it felt even less pure. It was confused and complicated by the bizarre rush of relief she felt at the prospect of human (or humanish) contact each time she was summoned. She wondered whether she was being brainwashed, and then, with a quiver of doubt, whether that was something she could even fight without playing directly into Aizen's hands.

"I am beginning to suspect," Aizen said one day during a meeting, "that neither my presence nor Ulquiorra's is quite the right choice for what we're trying to accomplish here."

"What—how do you mean?" Orihime asked. She still wasn't sure exactly what he was trying to accomplish anyway, other than that he, for some reason, thought there was any chance in hell that she'd want to help him accomplish something with the Hogyoku and his presumably evil end goals.

"I mean that you're not an unruly child who needs to learn restraint and composure from her wisers and betters."

Orihime's gut response, which she of course did not voice, was that this was ridiculous. She felt like a child all the time—she ate weird food, she said weird things, and she tended to cry when other people got hurt. She felt like what she needed more than anything in the world, right now and ever, was deeper, more constant composure.

"No," Aizen said thoughtfully, almost to himself. "I think it might be the opposite. You need someone who can teach you to pitch a fit."


	4. Chapter 4

Orihime stood at the edge of the Forest of Menos, knees shaking, hair whipping into her open mouth, sand stinging her cheeks and burning her eyes. A black shroud billowed in the wind ahead of her, and her eyes went up, and up, and up, before she caught sight of the white mask at the top of the swaying tower. It was a massive Hollow, a Menos, and it had taken less than three days outside of Las Noches to run afoul of one.

Grimmjow was, of course, unimpressed. She turned to look at him just as he settled down to recline against a sand dune to one side. She spread her hands desperately, but only managed a squeak of dismay.

"You've got this, right?" he asked, hands tucked behind his head. He took a moment as she stared at him in disbelief to sweep some sand out from under the half-mask against his right cheek.

"What?" Orihime croaked.

"Don't be such a crybaby. Just flip your hair at it, or whatever it is you do. I'm going to have a nap."

The son of a bitch actually leaned back and closed his eyes, and the Menos loomed closer.

Three days earlier, when Aizen had decided that Ulquiorra wasn't doing quite a good enough job of scaring her or whatever, Grimmjow had been summoned. It was the first time she'd seen him since she'd rematerialized his left arm and then watched as he immediately went to town on the other "Ex-Number Six," who hadn't stayed alive long enough for her to even learn his name.

"Hey, mom," he'd said, smirking, as he slouched into the room. Aizen never seemed to take much issue with anything his Espada did, including splattering each other across his throne room, but his mouth quirked with irritation at this. Grimmjow must have noticed, because he shaped up at once, greeting Aizen with the appropriate deference, though he didn't go quite so far as to take his hands out of his pockets as he bowed. Orihime mostly kept her eyes on the ground around the Espada, afraid to provoke them in any way, but something about Grimmjow's manner felt familiar. Or at least the fear she felt toward him was a familiar kind of fear.

She watched closely as Aizen informed Grimmjow of a new project he would be undertaking: an extended tour of Hueco Mundo, starting with the Forest of Menos, with Orihime in tow.

"What?!" she and Grimmjow said together. This time, Aizen was the one who smirked. Orihime lapsed into horrified silence, but Grimmjow bellowed in outrage.

"What the hell?" he asked, but watched his tone after Aizen cut him a look. "Why?"

"Miss Inoue requires training," Aizen said simply.

"Get Ulquiorra to do it, then."

"Ulquiorra has things to be about, and I suspect you have some free time on your hands now that Luppi is dead."

So that was the ex-Number Six's name, Orihime thought.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that you get lazy without someone to compete against." Grimmjow snorted, as if to indicate Luppi had never been competition, but Aizen continued. "Then again, if you'd like to make hay of it, I could always have Miss Inoue resurrect Luppi from the bits and pieces Grantz has been keeping on ice in his lab."

"Like you'd bother with that hack." Grimmjow grinned as he cracked the knuckles of one hand, preening a little. "Not after he went down so easy."

"You ought to be asking yourself why I'd bother with someone who would defy a direct order, Grimmjow."

Grimmjow's jaw tightened, and his eyes flashed between Aizen and Orihime. She got that this was only partially about her: she couldn't have said whether Grimmjow was on thin ice with Aizen, but it was becoming more and more evident that some kind of power struggle was in the works between them.

"As you wish, Lord Aizen," Grimmjow growled, and walked straight at Orihime. She knew at once that he wasn't going to be like Ulquiorra, and sure enough he grabbed her roughly by the wrist and tugged her toward the door. "Let's get after it, Princess."

The memo must have been quick to make the rounds, because by the time Grimmjow had towed her to the palace exit, Ulquiorra appeared with a thick, dun-colored cloak and a satchel over one arm. Without a word, he handed these to Orihime, who took them numbly and put them on. Next he drew a piece of paper from one pocket and held it out to Grimmjow, who snatched it irritably out of his hand. He scanned it briefly, then rolled his eyes and tore it to shreds.

"Gimme a fucking break," he said. The paper bits drifted down onto the smooth stone underfoot.

"Not negotiable," Ulquiorra said, unprovoked.

"Yeah, I got it." Grimmjow grabbed Orihime by the wrist again, but—did she imagine it?—a little gentler this time. Ulquiorra followed them as far as the main gate, almost as if he had more to say, but he never spoke, and Grimmjow never slowed. His skin was hard, like Ulquiorra's, but where Ulquiorr'as was cold, Grimmjow's was raging hot: it felt like a frying pan had tipped off the stove and onto her arm. Finally, when she couldn't take it anymore, Orihime spoke.

"You can let go of me," she said, breath rasping as she tripped along behind him. "I'm not going to run. Please," she added.

Grimmjow glanced back irritably, but didn't let go.

"Do it," Ulquiorra commanded. At first, Orihime thought he was talking to her.

"Piss off, Four," Grimmjow scowled. "Thought you had shit to be about. If you've got time to micromanage, you may as well be the one to babysit—"

A sharp green beam of light—a miniature Cero, by the look of it—glanced across Grimmjow's hand. Where the light hit, a three inch band of skin immediately blackened and crisped.

"Shit!" Grimmjow screamed, and dropped Orihime's wrist. He pressed his hand to his chest and turned, snarling, to Ulquiorra, but Ulquiorra had already turned away.

"Not negotiable," Ulquiorra repeated over his shoulder as he walked back the way they'd come. "I'd hate to think what Lord Aizen might do if you mismanaged another asset, and whether this woman would go to the trouble of helping you a second time." He tapped his temple meaningfully, then both hands were back in his pockets as he turned a corner and disappeared from sight.

Grimmjow, thoroughly chastised, silently led her down the huge, empty roads between high, empty buildings, toward the massive gate at the edge of the Las Noches grounds. He never stopped clutching his burned wrist. They passed no one else, which Orihime was thankful for. She got the distinct impression that Grimmjow was sulking, and that if any of the other Espada turned up to deliver snarky comments (which sometimes seemed like all any of them were good for), chances were good that she'd get caught in the middle of a pretty major brawl.

An hour's silent walk brought them to the edge of Las Noches. With no one monitoring the gate, Orihime wondered if it was mostly for show. There was no smaller side entry that she could see, and she ended up just dashing under the grate when Grimmjow heaved it upward, one-handed, before letting it fall closed behind them with a deafening crash.

Entering the wider world of Hueco Mundo should have been like passing into the countryside, but it was essentially the same landscape as the mostly-empty city, just without the buildings. Sand kicked up around Orihime's ankles in heavy drifts as she trudged along behind Grimmjow. In the distance, she could see an endless black stripe along the horizon—presumably what Aizen had called the Forest of Menos. Closer by, silver dunes rose on either side, shifting slowly but inexorably in the constant wind. Ahead of her, Grimmjow's footprints disappeared before she could even tread over them. The motion was soothing, almost hypnotic, after all those days in her lonely little room/cell, and the wind sang a low, melancholy tune as it passed. The air felt clean and wild here, and her steps slowed to take in the scene.

"Hurry up," Grimmjow barked. "Unless you want to make camp in ant lion territory tonight."

Orihime didn't know exactly what that meant, but she picked up the pace and jogged to close the gap. Not because she was afraid of Grimmjow, she realized, but because she automatically trusted his judgement. She caught herself sneaking peeks at his profile anytime he scanned the horizon. Between the skull-like grin and the bright blue hair, she couldn't think who he reminded her of, but as time passed, she became bolder about asking questions about the landscape and the small, lizard-like Hollows that skittered out of their path. According to Grimmjow, whom she pestered until he practically vibrated with irritation, they were native species like she would have seen on any trip to the country in the World of the Living…just a little more ghostly than she was used to, given the setting. A lot of them were oddly cute, though Grimmjow kicked sand at them when they came too close.

When the wind became so harsh that even Grimmjow scowled and scraped at his eyes, Orihime summoned a shield to act as a wind-break while they walked. Grimmjow scoffed when he saw it, and made jibes at Orihime for the first half-hour after it appeared. There was a bit of a trick getting it to move along at a constant pace. It kept lagging and then jerking ahead, but sure enough, even before she got it down, she noticed Grimmjow discretely adjusting his pace to keep himself on the shield's leeward side.

Orihime smiled. He was like a grumpy delinquent, she thought, too proud and busy being a badass to even make things easier on himself. Not that she was really one to judge on that score, but she figured she came to the same problem from the opposite direction: acting like nothing bothered her so that she wouldn't inconvenience anyone else. She'd thought that was the only way to justify her presence in the world, the only way she had to be strong. It was how she'd lived her whole life up to now…but lately she couldn't have said for sure whether it had ever been worth the effort.

That night they made camp shortly after Grimmjow announced that they were out of ant-lion territory, whatever that was. By that point, Orihime was too exhausted to ask. She checked the bag Ulquiorra had given her earlier that day, but there was no tent to be found, only some basic dried foods, a coarse blanket, and a water-bottle that she drained three times over before she realized it was spontaeneously refilling itself. Grimmjow refused her offer to share with a sniff.

"What should we do for shelter?" Orihime asked, pawing through the contents of her bag one last time, just in case she'd missed a little puptent or tarp.

"Who's we, human?" Grimmjow growled, and rolled over on his side with his back to her. "Figure it out for yourself."

Orihime wasn't particularly stung by this. She didn't know why his hostility struck her as so manageable, when she was terrified down to the bones when confronted by demonstrably calmer and apparently well-meaning personalities like Aizen or Ulquiorra. It couldn't be just that he was a few steps down on the Espada power-scale—relative to her, the difference wasn't even worth measuring.

In the end, Orihime simply cocooned herself in the thick blanket and lay down a few feet from Grimmjow. Gradually, the chill receeded with the howl of the wind, and she fell into a deep, black sleep.

Aizen was standing over her, holding her chin between his thumb and index finger.

Heart pounding, body paralyzed, Orihime averted her eyes—and saw the big, airy room where she'd stood at the fireplace weeks before. It was like a still-life: everything was even clearer than she could have remembered it. There was a small bright pile of fruit on the table nearby, shining like a miniature dragon's hoard, which she hadn't consciously marked during that meeting, and when she turned her head against Aizen's hand she could see Ulquiorra's straight, butlerish posture frozen mid-step beyond the open door. Not even the flames in the fireplace moved. Time was still.

Oh, thank god, she thought. Just a dream.

As her heart slowed to a normal pace, she wondered why now, of all times, she'd be dreaming. She couldn't recall having had any dreams at all since she'd come to Hueco Mundo.

Well, whatever. If it wasn't real, there was no point getting worked up. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. A mild almond scent in the air tickled her senses. That was another thing there wasn't much of in this world, she realized. Only humans and human food apparently emanated scents here. It was nice and fresh, like soap. She couldn't move much—she was part of the still-life—but she leaned toward the scent, and into the soft heat of Aizen's hand on her face. It wasn't something she'd considered doing at the time this little scene had actually taken place, but it felt different now. She was essentially alone with her memories—why not explore them?

And besides, the sensations felt vibrant and intoxicating after so many weeks out of the World of the Living, as if parts of her brain had fallen asleep in the sensory vacuum of Hueco Mundo and were now waking up. It felt good—it was a relief to feel at all.

She opened her eyes and did what she hadn't dared to do the first time this had happened. She looked directly into Aizen's eyes—not between them, or with her own eyes unfocused or blurred by tears. She simply stood studied his face.

At the time, she had thought he'd been leering and dominant, relishing her agony. There was power there, certainly, and an unnerving intensity, but when she looked at him without fear, it was like seeing a different person standing in front of her. He was alive, for the first time, real—but there was a deep, aching need in his face, as well. Something ancient and haunted, and hidden.

What had he been saying here? Orihime strained her memory. He had tilted her chin up as he alluded to needing her help with something, and had taken care to mention that she was being given a choice to be his enemy or his ally. I intend to find out which one you want to be.

And that had been the end of the meeting—she'd started to cry in earnest, she remembered, and Ulquiorra had returned and led her back to her room. At the time, she'd been utterly overwhelmed by finding out that, if she'd had any training, she might have been able to save the hundreds of people killed by Yammy at the crater. She hadn't been able to think past that point for days afterward, in fact. Even now, she felt the hesitance and self-loathing of her waking self seeping into her dream. She would wake up soon, she could feel it, and no doubt she'd feel all kinds of confusion and misgiving when she did.

But for now, there was a growing pressure in her chest as she watched Aizen's immobile face. In her mind, she heard Aizen asking her over and over what she wanted, daring her to make up her mind. The pressure turned out to be words, and she broke the absolute stillness as she spoke.

"You can't just say you want an ally, Aizen," she said, frustrated without knowing why. "You have to give me something to go on."

Just then, the fire behind her crackled. The low hum and snap of the burning wood began abruptly, and the shadows on Aizen's face shifted in the suddenly-alive firelight.

Now Orihime froze, hyper-conscious of Aizen's warm hand on her face, and the short distance between him and her. The faint almond scent grew swelled without warning, and the sensory rush made her knees give out. Without thinking, she put one hand on his chest to steady herself, and wound her fingers in the cloth of his white topcoat. She got her legs back under her—they were numb and tingly as if she'd been standing with her knees locked this whole time—but spent the next long, silent moment staring at her traitorous hand where it hung from Aizen's robes. She'd been spooked by the sudden shift, but at least he hadn't moved yet.

Orihime was about to release him and back away when a big hand covered hers and gripped it tight. Orihime's eyes went wide as she looked back up to Aizen's face, where a slight quirk of the eyebrows showed her the unthinkable: true surprise. It wasn't an expression she'd ever expected to see on his face. And he was smiling—it was the small, uncertain smile of a kid who hadn't expected any birthday presents finding out that he just might get one afterall.

"I knew it," Aizen breathed, and a hint of the familiar smugness returned. "I knew there was more to you than just tears and good intentions."

His right hand shifted against her cheek, and Orihime felt his thumb graze her bottom lip.

Electric heat shot down her spine as he leaned closer, and this time her chin rose on its own. The tips of his fingers were rough and calloused. Not what she'd expected.

"Just ask," Aizen whispered, breath warm on her cheek. Her heart was racing, and she could feel his beating hard where her hand was pressed against his chest. "Tell me what you want, Ori, and I'll give you anything."

No one had ever called her Ori before. She'd never even considered it as a possible nickname. It somehow made the dream—and Aizen—feel far too real, and she stepped back. Her heel hit the low wall of the fireplace and she almost fell bodily into the flames, but Aizen's arm wrapped around her waist to hold her up. Smoke billowed up around her—strange pale fumes that stung her eyes and closed her lungs.

"Even if it's just something to go on."

Orihime gripped the front of Aizen's robes with both hands now, struggling desperately as the smoke wrapped around her like a living thing. The arm around her waist had become hot and hard as iron—she was burning, being crushed—she couldn't breathe—

"Wake the hell up, woman!"

Orihime's eyes snapped open, but the darkness remained. She tried to breathe—and couldn't. Something was pulling her roughly upward, but what felt like a thousand pounds lay on top of her, holding her down. It felt like the time she'd tripped in her apartment and racked her spine against the edge of her low dining table, but so much worse. The air was being crushed out of her lungs—the hard thing from her dream was still around her waist, and sand was in her eyes and mouth.

"Goddammit, woman, do the—the thing!" someone was screaming, more angry than scared. "I'm not dying for this shit!"

She couldn't speak, but the chant formed spontaeneously in her mind, and the bright gold of her Santen Kesshun formed a shield between her and whatever was crushing her. Instantly the pressure lessened, though whoever had been shouting at her grunted as they were flung away.

Light streaked past her nose, followed by a spray of sand and slashed cloth. A voice she recognized as Tsubaki's grumbled, "idiot," before the light winked out. With some feeble wriggling and gasping, Orihime was able to sit up at last, and shucked the remains of her ruined blanket.

Grimmjow lay panting several feet away, fists clenched and covered in a thin sheen of crystaline sand. They were both at the bottom of a small, smoking crater. Little rivulets of silver sand ran down the sides here and there where the wind touched the walls.

It wasn't immediately clear what had happened, but at a guess, the dune she and Grimmjow had camped beside had grown too tall during the night and had toppled, burying them in an instant beneath several feet of sand. What was less clear was how they had survived. Or, rather, how Orihime had survived.

"I was trying to fish you out," Grimmjow snapped when she finally got him to talk to her again. "Nice job almost cutting me in half with that shield, by the way."

So it was his arm that had been around her waist—no wonder she'd felt like she was burning up in the dream.

The dream…that was another mystery, she supposed, and one she'd examine some other time. Her face blazed as she recalled the sensation of Aizen's fingers on her skin.

"Anyway, you sleep like the damn dead," Grimmjow grumbled. "What, were you having a wet dream or something?"

Completely without her consent, her right arm scooped up a handful of sand and flung it directly into Grimmjow's face. He went rigid for an instant, which gave her just enough time to form some vague notions of regret before he burst into laughter.

"That's a yes, then," he crowed, teeth glinting in the low light. "Be real, it was Uli, wasn't it?"

"Uli?" For a moment, Orihime almost thought he was referring to Ishida.

"Number Four in the Espada, but Number One in Hime's heart?"

"What?" Orihime didn't have to fake her surprise. "Why on earth—"

"No wonder he's so precious about you—like that stupid list earlier—but I guess it makes sense." He shrugged. "It's only natural to want to play with Daddy's toys."

"I can assure you," Orihime said, waving her hands frantically, "there has been no playing. He barely even speaks to me!"

Grimmjow hummed slyly at her protests, obviously intending to bait her further, but Orihime's focus shifted too quickly, and she blurted out the obvious question:

"And why would you jump straight to Ulquiorra?"

She hadn't meant to strike a nerve, but it was immediately apparent that she did. Grimmjow stopped laughing, jaw tight, and scoffed. "Pssh, like I even have to use my imagination. Humans fall in love with whoever hangs around them the most." Why did he sound like he was making excuses?

"Whatever," he said, absently scratching at the burn Ulquiorra's Cero had left on his hand. "If you're finally awake, we should get moving. With all the fuss, there'll be hungry Hollows gathering around here soon, and I don't feel much like doing you any favors at the moment."

Now they were standing at the edge of the Forest of Menos, a day later, and evidently Grimmjow still didn't feel like doing her any favors.

"You're supposed to be training, aren't you?" he asked as he adjusted his wide-open waistcoat. The desert cold didn't seem to bother him. He flung his hand at the advancing Menos. "So train. It doesn't get much more training-wheels than one of these. Why do you think Aizen told us to start here?"

Orihime still remembered the day the Menos had come to Karakura. She hadn't been able to see it then, but she'd felt it: the terrifying pressure of its reiatsu—

But she'd faced worse since then, hadn't she? She'd faced Hollows with a keen sense of strategy, no to mention real humans, whose motives were even less easy to divine. If nothing else, this creature's spiritual pressure was just a drop in the bucket compared to Ulquiorra's. Her first experience with a Menos may have stayed a terrifying memory, but the reality was that Grimmjow was right, and she could feel it.

"Alright," she said, and licked her lips. "Would you like me to shield you while you nap?"

"Screw you."

Orihime laughed. How long had it been since she'd really laughed? She put her hands to her temples and summoned the Santen Kesshun. Tsubaki was the first to appear, still griping, but she shushed him.

"That's plenty of that," she said. "Let's practice."


	5. Chapter 5

Three weeks had passed since Orihime faced that first Menos at the edge of the forest and won. There had been dozens more enemies and six more Menos since, four of which had flocked together to attack Orihime and Grimmjow's encampment one night while they slept. Grimmjow had bestirred himself to assist with that battle, but only after Orihime's right arm and leg had been severely burned by a close range Cero. It had taken her over twenty minutes of running around and dodging and shielding and Tsubaki-ing the massive pests to wear even two of them down, only for Grimmjow to step in and clean up the other two in about three seconds. It was done before Orihime had even finished healing herself. If nothing else, Grimmjow must have quite a bit of Zen-like patience stored up to bear with these so-called practice rounds.

It still felt deeply weird to be fighting Hollows alongside another Hollow, though it was surprisingly hard to think of Grimmjow in that way. Even the highly visible hole in Grimmjow's always-bare stomach had become commonplace. She just didn't notice it anymore, like a birthmark. Grimmjow also tended to steer sharply away from any topics that touched on questions of his Hollowness relative to the Hollowness of other lesser beings in Hueco Mundo. The last time Orihime had brought it up, he'd cut her off with: "I don't know, what makes you any different from any other shit creatures in your shit world?" He'd gone on to mumble something about rats, and Orihime had lost interest in talking to him for a while.

Grimmjow also hadn't let her heal the burn on his hand from Ulquiorra. She'd pressed him when it started to look infected and blistery, and she'd even gone so far as to try to sneak a rejection field over it while he was distracted, but she stopped after he threatened, pretty believably, to use his Zanpakuto release on her.

"You can't push so hard about healing," he'd said hours later, as if no time had passed. It was the first thing he'd said since losing his temper, and it didn't sound like he had it completely under control yet. Orihime had never been one to fear being alone with her thoughts, and constant travel with someone like Grimmjow hadn't changed that. Mostly, she relished the peace when he decided to sulk, but this time, she sulked back. She was tired and scratchy and hadn't had a proper bath for weeks, and barely even a spit bath with the refilling water bottle. Sand got everywhere.

"Oh, please," she said. "You were plenty excited for me to reattach your disentigrated arm and remove the scar tissue from your tattoo. And it's about all I'm good for, so, excuse me if I—"

"Not this shit again," Grimmjow growled. "I thought you were past this by now."

"What?" Orihime asked, hands up, shocked by the disdain in his voice.

"I'm sick of hearing about you're not good for anything but healing. If that was really all you wanted to do, you know, whatever—fine—but I've seen enough of Ulquiorra's recordings to know that's bullshit. You'll beg Urahara and Yasutora and that dick Kurosaki to let you fight, even hit 'em with the big, sad eyes when they tell you no—but you come over here and act like you'd never do such a thing. It chaps my ass more than this fucking sand."

"So what?" Orihime asked, voice rising. "So I feel a little guilty and want to help. What's wrong with that? It was my fault you got burned, anyway."

"Ugh," Grimmjow groaned. "That might be the dumbest, fakest shit you've ever said. Well, except for all the other times you've twisted reality to justify taking blame." He rolled his eyes and Orihime flushed with anger and embarrassment.

"Twisted reality?" she repeated incredulously, staring at him over the campfire. "How would you feel if you did nothing but stood on the sidelines and let other people protect you and hurt for you?"

"I wouldn't care." Grimmjow snorted. "What do you think I've been doing for the past two weeks?"

This brought her up short. It was true, she realized, that she'd been the one doing most of the defense work during their wandering. It was only when it looked like Orihime might get hurt past the possibility of recovery that Grimmjow stepped in. She'd broken both wrists and a leg by now, she'd been burned and bruised and concussed and cut. She wasn't as scared of being hurt now as she had been before, but even if the hurt only lasted as long as it took for her rejection field to kick in, it still took a toll. But even after all that, she still hadn't thought to blame Grimmjow for sitting those fights out.

"God, what is wrong with me?" she whispered, mostly to herself.

Grimmjow sniffed, pulling back, and scratched his scalp. "You're a product of your shit world, just like I'm a product of my shit world. Just because you jump between the World of the Living and Hueco Mundo doesn't mean anything about you changes with the scenery. That takes time and effort. You're making the effort, and I'm letting you. That's why I don't care when you get hurt."

Well, that stung. "What are you getting at?" she asked. For the first time in weeks, tears of frustration closed her throat. "I thought—" I thought we were friends, she wanted to say, but stopped herself.

"People don't always do what they want, but even when they do, you still can never know exactly what their reasons are. You think Ulquiorra was just protecting you when he burned me?"

"I think I know how to recognize the signs by now," Orihime answered. The bitterness in her tone surprised even her.

"Yeah, you're right. He protected you, but my guess is that his main interest was in using you, and his directive to protect you, as a reason to hurt me."

Orihime stared at Grimmjow. He looked away, eyes distant. "Why would he do that—"

"Never forget that we've been here, living and fighting and competing and eating each other, for a lot longer than you've even been alive. Most of the things that look like they're about you, aren't." He sighed. "And don't forget that it's been an even longer time since any of us were even remotely human. Your reality isn't ours, so you probably can't understand this, but—sometimes—our scars are worth keeping."

Orihime fell asleep that night without another word being spoken between them, but his last comment kept her awake many hours into the night. She thought of her brother, and how he'd become a Hollow when his feelings of being forgotten were exploited. His love and regret had bound him to the World of the Living as a spirit; he'd even protected her, but when those feelings—those scars—were taken away and corrupted, he'd gone on a rampage and tried to kill her.

For the first time, Orihime wondered why Grimmjow had never asked her to heal the horrible, disfiguring scar he'd gotten from Ichigo, and why she'd never thought to offer.

They didn't speak for the next few days. Anytime a Hollow attacked, which, given that Orihime's was probably the only human spirit in all of Hueco Mundo, was pretty constantly, she took simply took care of it. She started saving her shields for herself, without worrying about Grimmjow. The first time she did it, it felt spiteful, but once she faced the fact that she only shielded him out of guilt, and that her guilt was ultimately as dangerous as it was meaningless and self-serving, she made her peace. If he got hurt, she'd heal him. Letting herself get hurt only complicated things. Grimmjow seemed to approve, because that night he made her tea from some tiny bitter leaves he'd gathered while she fought. It wasn't entirely unlike green tea from the World of the Living.

They were getting deeper and deeper into the forest now, and Grimmjow led her down below the sandy upper crust of the landscape and into the strange twilit underworld of sprawling root systems and bioluminescent spore. They still hadn't spoken, but there was no reason to start up again just yet. It wasn't the kind of place to chat in, anyway. Eery, tapeworm-like hollows—apparently they were Gillians controlled like a hive mind by some distant Adjuchas—appeared here in droves, and attacked silently and en masse like rushing water. They pounded against Orihime's shields from every direction, writhing mindlessly over each other as they struggled to reach her.

Orihime's stamina and concentration expanded under the constant onslaught, until she was able to form denser, wider shields, and could heal wounds on the fly. She even learned to form and move a shield farther away, usually in the middle of the largest squirming mass, slicing in two any hollow that was caught in its area. Tsubaki wasn't pleased with this innovation, since it meant he wasn't called on as much, but he'd been becoming more still and quiet lately, and had grown more responsive when he was needed.

Although she was too exhausted to dream most nights, the silence did give Orihime a chance to think about the dream she'd had. In it, as unthinkable as it was, she'd looked at Aizen without fear, and he'd held her close in joy and relief.

It nagged at her, largely because it felt more like a real memory than what had actually happened. The original sequence, the one where she'd cried and been led away like a child, now felt unreal and unreliable, as washed out as a bad watercolor painting. It was fading thinly away like a mirage, and just behind it, the dream sequence was growing brighter, and clearer, and firmer to the touch. And whoever she was now, whoever she was becoming out here in this bleak, fight-or-die wilderness, knew which sequence she preferred.

But if what Grimmjow had said was true: that even the things that looked like they were about her probably weren't? Why had Aizen brought her here at all? Why was he going to the trouble of having one of his top officers—top creations, as she understood it—train her? If she was bait, she should have been rotting away in Ulquiorra's tower this whole time. He would have issued a ransom note, or provoked her allies in the World of the Living more directly to instigate a standoff: he and Ulquiorra and whoever else wouldn't have gone to the trouble of clouding the situation to make it look like she defected.

More to the point, Urahara had observed that it would take Aizen til winter to make the preparations he needed to use the Hogyoku—hadn't that much time passed by now? She hadn't felt the Hogyoku stir since the time he'd shown it to her right after she came to Hueco Mundo, and she didn't think that Aizen could do what he was planning to do without all his officers on hand, Grimmjow included.

As best she could tell—and this thought only complicated all her others—was that Aizen was waiting for something. And no matter how much she told herself she was being foolish, or self-important, or deluded, she couldn't shake the feeling that he was waiting for her.

Orihime stopped waiting for Grimmjow to break the silence. At least a week had gone by since their argument, and neither were angry anymore, that much she was certain of. They didn't avoid each other's gaze; even prolonged eye contact had lost its awkwardness. With that, small gestures and nods were more than enough to communicate. Out here, needs were simple, so action was only what it needed to be, and nothing more.

Grimmjow began taking over combat occasionally, indicating that she should rest or set up camp a safe distance away. Nothing here was a match for him, but he took his time—he seemed to need to stretch his muscles as much as Orihime needed to rest hers.

At night, deep underground, strange creatures approached their campfire: bright, spectral insects like dragonflies that nested in Orihime's hair and nibbled ineffectually on the hairclips her brother had given her. Grimmjow didn't shoo them away, so neither did she. She spent the time before she went to sleep practicing with her shields: using wide, featherlight leaves, she played keep-away with gravity, floating them from one shield platform to the next, breaking and reforming and breaking each one in rapid succession to catch the leaves before they hit the ground. She eventually learned to make tea by holding water above the fire until it boiled. Much of the trick was in purposefully thinning the supporting shield's surface until heat could pass through evenly. It was harder than it looked.

Orihime began to realize, after some time, that Grimmjow was leading them somewhere. During the day while they walked, he kept his nose in the air, snuffling now and then. They eventually took to the trees again, back on the surface. Orihime was surprised at how sad she was to leave the stillness of the underworld behind, with its scattered shafts of moonlight and silver sandfalls and campfire fairies, but she couldn't suppress a feeling of anticipation anytime Grimmjow put his hand on a huge, slate grey treetrunk like he was greeting an old friend, or when he closed his eyes and tasted the air before minutely changing course. The farther they went, the more peaceful it became—attacks from even Gillian class hollows tapered almost to a halt.

A few days of this brought them to a high cliffside riddled with holes. When they stopped at the treeline and looked up, Orihime thought she could see the top—a long, flat-lipped ledge—but when she squinted, she saw that it was just a gap. The wall itself continued even higher, out of sight into the sky. Some foreign instinct told her as she looked that it had no end—not above, nor below, or even along the horizon.

"This is the barrier to the World of the Living," Grimmjow said. His voice buzzed and crackled from disuse; hearing it at all was like being snapped in the ear by a rubberband. Orihime blinked at him for a while, stunned, before she thought to answer.

"Why are we here?"

"So you can decide if you want to stay."


	6. Chapter 6

**Sorry for the wait, and thank you all for the super-sweet reviews! Short chapter today, but more on the way soon!**

Orihime didn't move for a while. Grimmjow watched her, completely unreadable for once, and they simply stood and let the sad, rolling wind howl between them. The dryly rattling leaves of the tree line seemed very far behind them now, and the silent dead stone of the barrier far too near.

"What did you say?" she heard herself ask.

"I said it's time for you to decide if you want to stay here or go back to the World of the Living," Grimmjow said evenly.

Orihime questioned everything. She questioned the very reality of the last few weeks. She questioned whether she'd even left the tower. She questioned whether this was really Grimmjow, whom she was realizing now that she'd come to trust totally and completely, or an illusion of Aizen's that was about to disentigrate and show her once and for all what a silly little fool she was.

"It's real," Grimmjow said abruptly. "I can see what you're thinking, by the way. I'm real. This is real."

"How can I be sure?" Orihime's chest was tight. It was hard to think of home and breath at the same time.

"You notice how I haven't tried to seduce you even once over the past few weeks?"

Orihime flinched. "What?"

"Aizen and Ulquiorra seriously thought I would try." He rolled his eyes in distaste. "That's what was on that stupid fucking list. All the stuff I wasn't allowed to do on this trip."

"Which means—" Orihime couldn't even blush. She felt like she should be able to, but she couldn't. The idea of being "seduced" by anyone was embarrassing enough, but hearing the obvious disgust in Grimmjow's voice was pretty mortifying, too.

"Which means," Grimmjow said, rolling one hand, "if I was an illusion set up by Aizen, he doesn't know me well enough to know I wouldn't do that in the first place. It follows that the illusion-me would have tried something on you."

"Well, you say it follows," Orihime said, frowning, "but—if he went to the trouble of giving you a list of what not to do, then he must not want it happening at all—"

"Whatever," Grimmjow cut her off, scowling again. "Like I said: not everyone likes games as much as Aizen. I tried. Just go with me on this: it's real."

"So he didn't put you up to this?"

"Fucking hell!" Grimmjow was losing his patience. "No, he didn't put me up to it. It's not a test, or an illusion, or a joke. Damn, woman."

"Then he'll kill you for it." The words were out of Orihime's mouth before she could even process them, but she knew that if the rest of this was real and true, then that was almost definitely the only outcome for Grimmjow if he let her go.

"I'm not that easy to kill," Grimmjow said dismissively, but Orihime knew the sound of bravado when she heard it. Grimmjow may not have been human, but he was still male, and males were almost always more transparent than they realized.

"You don't like me enough to just be doing this for me," Orihime said. "Tell me why you're doing this, and maybe then I'll believe you that I'm really free to go."

Grimmjow huffed out a breath. "You're kind of a pain in the ass. Has anyone ever told you that?"

Orihime smiled—because it hurt—but she didn't answer. She'd had people tell her that; she'd had people not tell her that. Either way, she'd always known when people thought it and felt it. She'd spent so much time trying not to be a pain, trying to be convenient and easy to love, and somehow it never really worked.

"Grimm," she said gently. "Please stop being such a crybaby and just answer me." Grimmjow blinked at her, head cocked.

"What?" Finally, it was Grimmjow's turn to be surprised.

"What, what?" Orihime asked. "Did you really think I would just cry and run for home as soon as you cut the leash, no questions asked, no explanation required?"

"Kinda, yeah," Grimmjow said, and scratched his jaw.

Orihime gave him a crooked smile. It was all she could manage. "No, you didn't. You knew I'd be conflicted for one reason or another. Come on, out with it."

Grimmjow's eyes cut away, and she knew she was right. They'd been traveling together, sleeping next to each other, fighting with and for each other, for weeks now. He may not think of her as a friend, but he knew her well enough by now to know she thought of him as one. And everyone knew her friends were her weak spot. It was why she was here at all.

"You won't think so," Grimmjow said suddenly, "but you've changed while you've been here."

Orihime's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?" She didn't feel that much different—she still missed home, and her friends, and she still doubted herself any time she used her power. The training had helped, but—

"I know I said before that people don't change with the scenery, but you kind of have." He shook his head. "I realized it just a few days in, starting with that first Menos. You're not who you were when you came here. The change has been—surprisingly fast."

"Okay," Orihime said warily. She suddenly didn't know what to do with her hands, and fidgeted. "I mean, I don't know if you're right, but what does that have to do with anything? Wasn't that the whole point of Aizen sending us on this—training mission?"

"It doesn't matter if you change if you can't realize how much," Grimmjow said, frowning. He was looking for words. He was a surprisingly thoughtful guy, but he couldn't always express those thoughts particularly well, it seemed. "You need a foil. Something to show you, or you'll just keep going back to old habits and instincts, and doubting yourself. You'll keep wanting the same things, even if they're not good for you. I figure, if you need to go home to see how much you've changed, so be it."

That, Orihime thought, made some sense. It sounded more or less like what she'd realized before—with that same Menos, actually. She'd been able to fight it and win only because she realized how much she'd learned since the first day she used her power back in Karakura. But something about it didn't line up.

"So you're sending me home now to—foil me?" Orihime asked hesitantly. She supposed it made sense if Grimmjow wanted her to see how much her power had grown, but... "But all the monsters are here."

Something like hurt flashed across Grimmjow's face, and she realized what she'd said. "I didn't mean—"

"I get it," Grimmjow said quickly, but she could hear the hurt in his voice. The guilt hit her hard—even if she tried to remind herself that having Grimmjow as a friend and Ichigo as a friend at the same time was impossible—she still didn't want to hurt him anymore than she wanted to hurt Ichigo. "But it's because you think that way that Aizen can't use you."

"He can't _use_ me," Orihime said, flaring and forgetting some of her guilt, "because I don't want to be used."

"You might if you knew what he was really about," Grimmjow said. "But he also can't tell you—and I'm sure as hell not going to, because he really will kill me for that—until you're ready to accept it."

"That makes no sense," Orihime said. She sat down on the lip of a boulder in frustration and shook her head. "You can't tell me what it is you want me to agree to…until I agree to it?"

Grimmjow nodded. At least he was honest, she thought, but she scoffed. Her jaw clenched as she looked up at the velvet sky.

"I keep letting myself forget it, but—you guys literally kidnapped me!" She laughed, almost hysterically, and Grimmjow rolled his eyes.

"We did not kidnap you—"

"Coerced, then!" Orihime almost shouted, throwing her hands up. "Still not great! I like you, Grimm, and I'm grateful for all you've taught me, but we obviously don't have the same ideas about what is right and good, and nothing—" she shook her head as she looked up at him. Tears were welling up in her eyes, but she couldn't stop them. "Nothing is going to make me okay with a plan to wipe out my hometown. Or anyone's hometown, for that matter. I will never go along with it. I will never help."

"So you'd rather be Aizen's enemy?" Grimmjow asked. His voice was very even, and he stood very still. She wondered if he was thinking of killing her.

"If that's what it takes, yes," Orihime said, but her throat closed up. She kept thinking of Aizen as she'd seen him in the dream. She wanted to see him again—meet him again. She wanted to see what he looked like to her now that she'd changed. But her curiosity wasn't worth thousands of lives.

"Then go home and be his enemy," Grimmjow said. His voice was flat with hard, unrelenting anger, and he turned away from her. "Or try. Heal your friend, if he'll even let you do that much, and then sweetly ask permission—one last time—if he and the others will _let you_ fight your war."

Orihime felt like she was being pulled in two. It should have been easy, she thought. She should have been able to just cut and run, before Grimmjow changed his mind, before Ulquiorra appeared and cut her down like—like—

"What did you say?" she asked. Grimmjow didn't turn back around. His shoulders and neck were tense, and his fists were clenched at his sides.

"I said you should go the hell home and ask—"

"I heard that part," Orihime said, holding up a hand. "Before that. Heal what friend?"

Now Grimmjow turned around, eyes narrowed. "Kurosaki," he answered. His voice was still hard with anger, but carried a note of confusion, too. "Tall, stupid, orange hair…chopped my arm off? Kind of a dick?"

Orihime's heart froze in her chest. "Did something happen to him?"

"Uh, yeah?" Grimmjow said. He looked like he couldn't decide whether to be irritated or confused. "We fought, we fucked each other up, then Ulquiorra showed up and _really_ fucked him up—"

Orihime shook her head. "I healed him already. Before I came here. Ulquiorra gave me twelve hours, and I went to Ichigo's room and said goodbye and healed him—"

"No, you didn't," Grimmjow said blankly. "Ulquiorra has footage from that twelve hours. We've all seen it. Plus, Kurosaki's been recuperating all this time."

Orihime shook with an involuntary shudder. Her vision went fuzzy. "That's impossible—"

"It's really not," Grimmjow said wryly. "Ulquiorra packs a punch, trust me."

"No—I—I remember—" Orihime shook her head again, but this time because she couldn't clear it. She was seeing double, but not double-vision. Even when she closed her eyes she saw it: two memories of the same night. Not consecutive, but concurrent. Like a double-exposed photograph, with the ghost of the same image layered up twice.

Both memories showed her Ichigo's room: a little messy, but not too much. Just…dishevelled. Cozy, with a well-organized desk. He studied more than he liked to admit.

Both showed Ichigo lying in bed, bandaged, sweating, in pain. Both showed her standing over him. Both showed her thinking of kissing him.

In one, she couldn't do it. She'd cried, and her tears had splashed on his cheek as she held his hand. She'd felt and relived this memory a thousand times since she'd left home: the conflict, the agony. The guilt she felt for what she was doing, even as she healed him and told him that even across five separate lives, she would have loved him.

In the other memory—the one she couldn't stop seeing since Grimmjow had spoken—she had kissed him. His lips had been warm with fever, and chapped from his constant labored breathing. She could still feel how rough they'd been, and how perfect. She touched her mouth with sandy fingers, and felt how chapped her own were now. She'd been out here so long, she felt suddenly. It had been so long since then. She didn't actually know how long. She'd assumed weeks, but…

In this memory, she hadn't cried, and she hadn't held his hand. She'd felt the same agony, the same regret, the same five lifetimes worth of love. The same longing, almost undeniable, to stay beside him even as she said goodbye…and that she was sorry, but—

" _But I can't let you come after me_ ," Orihime whispered. The words tasted familiar. She'd said them before.

She hadn't healed him. She'd realized that if she did, he would run straight to Urahara or Yoruichi or whoever and beat down the door to Hueco Mundo—and die.

And even if he didn't die, he wouldn't succeed. The Hogyoku was still in Aizen's grasp. It was an undeniable force, a state of being, or of reality. Like a storm, or a wound. It wouldn't respond to repeated attacks with a zanpakuto, no matter how powerful or determined, no matter who wielded it. It was a thing that couldn't die, or break. It could only be—

Healed. Unmade.

And Orihime was the only one who possessed the power to unmake.

In this memory, she really hadn't been kidnapped. Or even coerced, she realized. She had come willingly, because she'd realized then that she had a job to do.

And she still did.

Orihime couldn't have said for sure which of her memories were real. In fact, she felt with startling, almost absolute, certainty that somehow they both were real…was one an illusion, then? Or something else…something was tugging at her. A familiar sensation. Not deja vu, exactly, but—the sense that this—this strange kind of double-exposure—had happened before.

But memory aside, if what Grimmjow had said was true and Ichigo was still healing from his wounds, she seemed to be living a totally different reality, totally different set of consequences than she'd thought. Either Aizen was messing with her, or she was going crazy.

Either way, she wasn't going home. Not yet.

"Take me back," she said quietly, and Grimmjow's eyes snapped to hers. She met his gaze. "We're going back to Las Noches."

"What?" Grimmjow started. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious. "You just said—after all that, why would you change your mind?"

"I didn't change my mind," Orihime said. "But you told me to choose, and I did. I'm staying. Take me back."

 _Take me back to Aizen_ , she almost said. _There's something I need to know._


	7. Chapter 7

The heavy metal grate at the entrance of Las Noches screeched as Grimmjow picked it up, and crashed as he let it go. There was only stone underfoot here, but sand piled up in drifts in against every corner of every big, blank building along the path. The sky was a shimmering velvet black, and the moon was a vibrant silver coin.

Orihime looked around. Either nothing had changed, or everything had. She knew it was one of the two, she just couldn't decide which.

The return trip had passed faster than she'd ever believed possible. It made her wonder if space here in Hueco Mundo was as flexible and elastic as time seemed to be, and whether Grimmjow had warped or fast-traveled them back somehow, or whether they'd simply been wandering around in a circle for all those weeks, and not in a straight line like she'd thought.

The silent city streets were almost impossibly still after the constant movement of the desert and the forest. It made Orihime feel shaky and unstable, pitching slightly as she and Grimmjow walked through the streets. It was like she'd just stepped off a boat after a long time on the water. Sea legs? No, you got sea legs when you got acclimated to the boat, she thought. What about after, when you got back to land? Land legs sounded dumb. Sand legs, then?

Grimmjow left to flash-step ahead and let Ulquiorra know they'd returned. He offered to stay with her, but she could tell he was itching to go. He probably wanted a break from her, and honestly, she wouldn't mind a little solitude herself. She walked the streets alone, making her way back to Ulquiorra's tower by line of sight. She didn't know the way by heart, but she'd get there, she decided. If nothing else, wandering in the wilderness had made her appreciate a little waywardness in her travels.

But when a tinkly little laugh broke the stillness of the city street behind Orihime, she wondered if she'd been a bit hasty to let Grimmjow leave so soon.

"Look who's back," said a vaguely familiar voice.

"And looking a little worse for wear," said a second.

Orihime turned to find Menoly and Loly, two of Aizen's aides, standing behind her. They were grinning like hyenas, practically salivating, as they looked her up and down. The blonde one, Menoly, Orihime thought, stepped closer and sniffed the air.

"And smelling a _lot_ worse for wear," she said, tittering.

Loly, or whichever one had the dark hair, stepped up next and wrinkled her nose, making a sour face as she grinned even wider. "I wonder if we can find a way to make it worse?"

Orihime frowned. She probably did smell bad by this point, she realized. She hadn't had a bath in weeks, or months, perhaps. Her clothes were a wreck—she'd rejection-fielded them roughly a million times to keep herself covered, but past a certain point, she'd only done what she had to to keep them structurally intact. Keeping them clean was a battle she'd long since lost interest in fighting. Her hair, as well, had been pulled back for days now in a wind-proof knot that had more or less crusted into a hair-shaped shell of sand and twigs. She'd just stopped messing with it after a while, like her clothes, and had almost forgotten it was there.

"Hm," Orihime said, nodding. "I should probably have a bath before I see Aizen, shouldn't I?" Maybe that was what Grimmjow was thinking when he went ahead, she thought.

Menoly and Loly's faces contorted with rage and disgust simultaneously, and Orihime guessed that had been the wrong thing to say.

"How dare you," Loly seethed, stepping closer to Orihime with her hand up, and Menoly moved as well. "You—you— _whore!_ "

It was sad. Every time Orihime had seen them, they were like this. Belligerent, mistrustful; cruel in a snide, petty way. They finished each others sentences, but also struck each other without a second thought. They were a kind of matched set, with their masks over opposite eyes, though they looked nothing alike. Orihime found it hard to focus on the fear she'd felt a moment before as she wondered whether they were friends or sisters—or if Arrancar could even have siblings.

There was a _tick_ , and Loly's hand stopped abruptly against the shield that had appeared between her and Orihime.

Loly's nostrils flared, but Orihime couldn't really find it in her to engage. She was terribly tired of fighting, she realized. It was like all that time and effort had started catching up to her ever since she'd walked back into the city. She already wasn't on alert like she had been. It was supposed to be safer in the city than in the wild. But, she sighed as the thought occurred, this city was filled to brimming with bored, high-octane Arrancar.

 _Nevermind, I guess._

Menoly tried next, from the opposite side, the bright red bulb of a Cero forming in her hand. Orihime moved the shield away from Loly, swinging it up, then down, to knock Menoly's wrist aside. The Cero in her palm blazed to life—and scorched the sand at Loly's feet. If Loly hadn't leapt back at the last second, eye wide, she might have lost a few toes.

"You bitch!" Loly screamed, eye wide and staring, but Orihime couldn't tell right away if she was talking to her or Menoly, who was staring at the burn mark, hand shaking as she clutched her wrist.

Orihime guessed Loly was talking to her after all when she lunged, hand out, and grabbed Orihime's hair.

Orihime grit her teeth and hissed in pain, jerking away in reflex, but Loly's grip was hard and strong, and dragged her head back sharply. It hurt. This time the shield was too slow, and Orihime was too off-balance to swing it around. She kept it trained on Menoly, in case she had another Cero brewing, and grappled with Loly hand to hand, nails scratching like a bonafide catfight. Close range wasn't Orihime's strong suit, though, and soon enough Loly had her down on one knee. Loly snarled, shrieking with triumphant laughter as she scrabbled with both hands for Orihime's hair clips—

Orihime reacted instantly, instinctively, with no particular thought except to keep Loly's grasping hands away from her Santen Kesshun. Tsubaki flared to life under Loly's hard, prying fingers, and slashed the air.

Loly screamed once—a gut-twisting, horror-movie wail—and fell back onto the sandy street. Orihime spun in place, certain for a long instant that she'd been careless and had killed her—but Loly was in one piece, except for perhaps her dignity, and was sitting on her ass on the sandy stone, clutching a handful of Orihime's hair. And not just a handful, she realized. The whole sandy, wind-proof knot had been sheared off in one go by Tsubaki's attack. Well, it had been more a shot across the bow than an attack. It looked a lot like a fat yellow onion, one of the ones Orihime might have used for curry back home.

"Hm." Orihime cocked her head quizzically as she felt the now-loose ends of her hair tickle the back of her neck and ears. Though still uncomfortably stiff and dirty, the relief to her neck and shoulders was immediate—so immediate that she couldn't even be upset. She'd never realized how heavy her hair was, not to mention when it was carrying a pound or two of crusted-in desert landscape. Now it shushed freely against her skin, raining sand and twigs, and she raised her fingers to brush it out. By the feel, it was sharply angled from the single slice and, she guessed, about as long as it had been when her brother first gifted her the clips that would someday house her Santen Kesshun, the day after some bullies from school had cut her hair. With safety scissors, humiliatingly enough. Funny how time and events seemed to repeat themselves, she thought, and smiled.

"You can keep that," she said to Loly, who immediately made a disgusted sound and dropped the matted lump. Orihime looked over at Menoly next. Menoly hadn't moved from behind the shield, almost like it was in place to protect her, and was cutting quick, frantic little glances between Orihime and Loly. She looked horrified, aghast, though Orihime couldn't imagine why. They'd come here planning to do real violence, hadn't they? Weren't they used to fighting? She hadn't even hurt them, hadn't even wanted to. She'd just…not let them hurt her. So why the shock? She shook her head, confused, but then smiled again at the still-novel feeling of her hair against her neck.

"It's almost as short as yours now," she said to Menoly, because it was. "It's nice. I can't stop swishing it," she laughed, and grinned, demonstrating. "Don't know why I didn't think to do this while I was out in the desert. Thanks for the idea."

"Sure," Menoly said, though it came out a gasp. Loly shot her a furious glance—an I'll-deal-with-you-later look—and spit once on the ground at Orihime's feet.

"Fucking bitch," Loly hissed, and stuck a hand out for Menoly to help her up.

Orihime's smile faded. She wasn't here to make friends, she told herself for what felt like the millionth time, but she would have liked to be civil. You know—set a boundary, but be civil. She'd done that with Grimm, and even Ulquiorra, and they were more powerful by several orders of magnitude than Menoly and Loly. She really couldn't fathom what their issue with her was. They were obsessed with Aizen, in the way most of the lower Arrancar were, but Orihime was there on Aizen's say-so. If anything, it seemed like they should be giving Orihime a slightly wider berth, but they acted like they wanted to kill her. It all felt, Orihime realized, very high school. And she really didn't have time for high school.

Orhime picked up her satchel, which had fallen off in the brief scuffle, and nodded, resigned, but her smile twitched back into place as her short hair brushed her cheek. Wow, that really was so much better.

"Well! Take care," Orihime said, and clapped lightly. Menoly jumped and stepped back as the shield between them winked out of existence.

Orihime was almost past before she saw the bruise forming on Menoly's shaking wrist. There was a sharp red line where the shield had struck her as she'd prepared her Cero.

"Oh," Orihime said, frowning, and stopped. Now she did feel a little guilty. It looked like it hurt. "I'm sorry about that. Would you like me to fix it?" Her hands went automatically to her clips.

"Get away from me," Menoly gasped, and stepped back so fast she almost fell over. Loly said nothing, just clasped Menoly's sleeve possessively and sneered in outrage and disgust.

Orihime sighed, but didn't push it. She put her back to Menoly and Loly and walked on, continuing on her way to Ulquiorra's tower.

She felt a bit guilty about leaving them that way, without the slightest ounce of reconciliation…but it was just a bruise, she supposed, and anyway, maybe it would remind them to hold off next time they felt like jumping her. She'd shielded and slashed and rejected out in the wilderness because she'd had to, not because she enjoyed it. She didn't want to have to do it here, too. She needed to rest, and she needed to think.

It had been difficult to hold onto what had happened, what she'd remembered and learned, at the border. It kept slipping away from her like a dream, then suddenly resurfacing in her mind with a forceful reminder of why she was really here. Regardless of which memory was true—or truer?—she had to deal with the Hogyoku, and soon. Before Ichigo recuperated fully, or enough to lead a strike team into Hueco Mundo to search for her. There really didn't even need to be a fight, she thought, if she could get close enough to the Hogyoku to slip a rejection field over it. She doubted it would be that easy, and she doubted once would be enough, but she had to start somewhere.

Maybe—maybe once the Hogyoku was gone, Grimmjow and Ulquiorra and the others that weren't her friends but also weren't truly enemies could just…move on. At this point, hope was all she was operating on. It wasn't very structured, but it was an ideal she was willing to fight for.

Whether he knew it or not, Grimmjow's plan to show Orihime how much different she was now than she'd been at the start of their trip was playing out after all. She may not have gotten to go home to the World of the Living, but the strange sense of relief she felt when she stepped back into Las Noches was its own kind of revelation. She had…she had missed it. She'd barely even thought about it, and yet as soon as she was back, she realized that she'd missed it. Wasn't that kind of what coming home was like?

She shook her head to dispel that thought. Las Noches was a setting, she told herself sternly, and that was it. It wasn't home, it wasn't another town where some distant relatives lived, it wasn't a beach resort. It wasn't a place to heal boo-boos or make friends out of enemies. It wasn't anything except the space where she was at this time. It was the place she needed to be, to do the thing she needed to do. And that was it.

Ulquiorra met Orihime at the entrance to the tower, hands in pockets, feet planted like he hadn't moved since she'd left.

"Welcome back," he said, and she couldn't not smile at him. She tried to remember what she kept forgetting—that he and the others weren't her real friends, but—later. She'd deal with it later.

"Thanks," she said wearily, and patted his arm as she passed inside. Ulquiorra's eyes cut down to her hand, but he barely moved.

"I was informed that you wish to speak with Lord Aizen," he said formally.

"What I really wish is for a bath and some sleep and some non-dried food," she said, without thinking. "If I go see him now, I'll just make a nuisance of myself in one way or another. Whether by passing out or just stinking the joint up."

Ulquiorra was quiet as she slipped out of her cloak and satchel. She headed automatically up to her old room, but stopped when he spoke.

"I see you did not exaggerate," he said, and Orihime tsked, embarrassed, assuming he was referring to the smell, but a voice sounded from the adjoining room.

"No shit," someone called. "But don't act so surprised."

Grimmjow appeared in the doorway, nibbling idly on something, maybe a biscuit or cracker or possibly even a piece of very white and probably tasteless meat. It didn't look particularly appetizing, but Orihime's belly growled anyway. He also looked clean and refreshed in a way that instantly irritated Orihime, who now felt doubly scrubby and out of place in Ulquiorra's immaculate entryway.

"Come on, I saw you like an hour ago," she said, laughing. "How are you already so relaxed?"

Grimmjow shrugged, and Ulquiorra cast an unsubtle glance between them. Grimmjow ignored it and squinted at Orihime, tilting his head. "Did you—did you always look like that?"

"What?" Orihime automatically looked down at herself and brought her hands to her face before she remembered her hair. "Oh, right."

"So—?" Grimmjow looked puzzled. Deeply puzzled. "Is that a no?"

"You mean my hair, right?" Orihime asked.

"Yeah, I mean—I guess."

She paused, then grinned again. "Wait, you seriously can't tell that my hair is about a foot shorter than it was an hour ago?" She laughed. "Guys really are all the same."

"Shut up," Grimmjow drawled lazily, mouth full. "Hurry up and get washed—Aizen'll want to see you soon."

Orihime sobered. "Right. Don't eat all my food before I get back, though, or I'm sending you to the World of the Living for Thai."

Ulquiorra didn't speak, but from the corner of her eye, she saw him watching her carefully as she climbed the stairs. She must really look a mess, she thought, if even Ulquiorra was staring.

Orihime shut the door of her room and peeled herself out of her clothes like a bruised, dirty banana. There was a big bathtub in the corner waiting for her, almost a pool. It steamed in welcome as she dipped a toe in, and she sighed, savoring the feeling of water on her dry, chafed skin.

It felt like actual, factual Heaven, she thought as she slipped in. The water lapped and sloshed heavily over the side, but she formed a barrier by reflex and caught it before it hit the ground. She wasn't willing to waste even a drop, and raised the shield up to release the water back into the tub. Each falling drop winked a like a crystal, or a glass jewel.

Orihime breathed in, then out, in pure, unadulterated bliss, and let her legs fly up with a tiny shriek of glee as she slipped below the water to thrash and scrub her scalp. She came up a moment later panting and blinking and looking around for soap—and saw a blurry form standing over her.

"Oh, come on!" she said, sputtering. She pulled her knees up and crossed her arms over her breasts.

"Your control has very much improved—" Ulquiorra said mechanically, but Orihime cut him off.

"Nope, later," she said, shaking her head hard enough that a few droplets spun away and landed on Ulquiorra's robes. "Human bath time is not a social event, sir."

"I was led to believe that in your world it is very much a social event," he said, unbelievably serious. "In fact, I can call up a great deal of footage from the so-called hot springs and bathhouses—"

"And that footage will show you that there's one space for the women and one for the men!" Orihime said, appalled, but also just about ready to laugh. "Now, go on, scoot, please. I'll be out in a minute. You can—debrief me about my improved control then."

Ulquiorra frowned, pensive, but turned around and left.

"Jeez," Orihime said, sinking back into the water, but then she gasped. " _Ah_ , I should have asked for soap."

xxxxxxxxxxx

A few hours later, Orihime walked into Aizen's throne room, heart pounding, flanked by Ulquiorra and Grimmjow.

She wasn't sure why Aizen had chosen to receive her here, of all places. Their previous encounters had all been fairly informal, after the first big one when she first arrived. But she supposed he wanted to make some kind of statement. Maybe he knew she'd chosen to come back after Grimmjow offered to cut her loose, and was wanting to preen a bit. He seemed like a guy who wouldn't hesitate to preen occasionally. He did have—and use—an actual throne room, after all.

A few of the other Espada were hanging around, as usual, with little troupes of their Fracciones, who were mostly just leering and showing off for each other. Orihime didn't know much about most of the Espada, and so reserved judgement as much as she could, but anytime she caught sight of Yammy, the giant number ten who had killed so many at Karakura just for the fun of it, her stomach clenched with loathing. He was the one she would never, ever forgive—just like in some ways she would never, ever forgive herself for having been so useless that day.

 _Never again_ , she thought. No matter what it took.

Her goal—the Hogyoku—bobbed back up to the surface of her thoughts, and felt herself become still and resolute. She stopped twisting her hands in her new skirt and let them hang at her sides. Grimmjow touched her elbow and she closed her eyes briefly—she was fighting for him, and Ulquiorra too, she told herself, just like she was fighting for Ichigo and Tatsuki and Rukia. She was perhaps the only person in the world that could fight the situation, rather than the people involved in it. Now she just had to find her opening.

"Welcome back, Miss Inoue," said a deep, rolling voice from the dias, and Orihime's heart kicked up again. Now she knew why Grimmjow had touched her elbow: Aizen had appeared and taken his seat, with his captains Tosen and Gin standing behind him. She nodded as his voice washed over her. The last time she'd heard that voice had been in a dream, but it sounded just like she remembered it.

"Thank you, Lord Aizen," she said, and her words carried loudly, echoing through the hall.

Aizen looked the same—the sly amusement, the single trailing lock of hair across the bridge of his nose, the hooded, hungry eyes—but something felt different now. She couldn't place what it was from this distance, but it made her spine tingle and she caught herself chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"I hope you're well after your long journey," Aizen said. His tone was teasing and melodic, and Orihime shivered slightly. Just what on earth, she wondered, was going on with her?

"Very," Orihime said, playing along with the pomp and ceremony to buy herself time. "Ulquiorra received Grimmjow and myself very graciously earlier. And Grimmjow kept me quite safe on our travels."

"I'm glad to hear it," Aizen said, and seemed about to dismiss her. "Very well, then—"

"I would like to discuss it in greater detail sometime," Orihime said in a rush, and Grimmjow inhaled sharply beside her. Ulquiorra became very still, and so did the rest of the throne room. Orihime immediately knew she'd done something wrong. She hadn't even thought anyone else was listening, and yet what she'd said had garnered a reaction—apparently from all quarters.

Someone in the shadows whistled mockingly, and someone else followed with a lewd "Yeah, I bet you would."

One of the greater Espada, a huge bear of an old man she hardly recognized, grumbled in obvious disapproval but said nothing she could make out. A tall blond woman, whose face but somehow not her bust was concealed by a slightly preposterous crop-top jacket, narrowed her eyes as her arms folded over her mostly-visible torso.

"By all means," Aizen said, ignoring them all. "I will send for you in good time."

 _Yikes_ , Orihime thought, but kept her cool as best she could while Ulquiorra bowed and Grimmjow pushed her toward the door.

"Thank you, Lord Aizen," Ulquiorra said deliberately. "We await your pleasure."

xxxxxxxx

"That," Grimmjow pronounced crisply as they hurried from the throne room and out into the courtyards a few minutes later, "was extra-fucking-dumb, kiddo, even for you."

Orihime raised her hands, exasperated, but Ulquiorra cut her off. "I must agree that that was not exceptionally good timing on your part."

Orihime exhaled once and tried to steady herself. It scared her that they were so worked up, but she couldn't understand why.

"I don't know if you've noticed this, guys," Orihime said, "but I'm literally a human, from a small human town where we don't get a lot of practice with god-king throne room etiquette. There also wasn't a lot of that while I was wandering in the desert for weeks with _this_ guy—" she motioned to Grimmjow, and Ulquiorra cut him a look, "and so maybe next time tell me what to expect and I'll do better."

"I don't think you fully appreciate how serious a breach of protocol that was," Ulquiorra continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "Lord Aizen was quite merciful, but you should never do it again."

"I still don't even know what I did that got everyone's attention—"

"You don't just tell a god-king you're gonna pencil him in," Grimmjow explained flatly. "You go through channels to beseech his good will and attention, or some shit."

"I never went through channels before," Orihime said, making a face.

"You went through me," Ulquiorra corrected her, with surprising force. "You may have seen Lord Aizen with considerable frequency, but it was still only when he wished it, and always with a chaperone."

"Oh," Orihime said. She thought about this for a long moment, then blushed. "So—"

"So you may as well have just propositioned him in front of his whole court, yeah," Grimmjow said, and Orihime's hands went to her face. "Nice job."

"The rest of the Espada are not aware of your," Ulquiorra paused to search for the word, "remarkably casual history of interaction with Lord Aizen. You would do well to downplay it. It would not be politically expedient, nor especially safe, for it to become known."

Orihime breathed out. She didn't really understand why it wouldn't be safe, but then court intrigue wasn't something she'd factored into her secret calculations regarding the Hogyoku. Maybe that had been a mistake.

"Alright," she said reluctantly. "I'm—I'm sorry. To both of you. If I made you look bad."

"Ha!" Grimmjow barked. "No skin off my ass. You walking in and going straight for the big-dick power play? Everyone's gonna know it was my shining influence that did it."

Orihime smiled, a little relieved that at least he wasn't mad at her, but Ulquiorra became even more displeased. "Please ignore him—Grimmjow is easily the least politically desirable connection you can have within the Espada, and will lead you straight to ruin, and me through you."

"Shut the fuck up, Four," Grimmjow said, though it kind of just proved Ulquiorra's point for him. "At least I respond to summons. Did you notice Starrk didn't bother showing up? Again?"

"Starrk is hardly the example you or anyone else should be following," Ulquiorra chided him. "He is on another level entirely from the rest of us."

Orihime found herself smiling in earnest as she looked between Grimmjow and Ulquiorra. She'd fallen back a few steps behind them, and they hadn't even noticed, consumed in their little battle as they were. This image of them going tit-for-tat was hard to reconcile with her memories from all those weeks ago: Ulquiorra burning Grimmjow's hand as he towed her out of the city that day, and then Grimmjow's vague allusions to some hidden history between them…although it was probably just hidden to Orihime, and everyone else knew.

It was also possible that everything had just been scarier to Orihime then. Like the dream she'd had about Aizen, which now she kept going back to over and over as a source of comfort. Yes, things were tense, but the sense of immediate overwhelming peril had faded ever since she'd gone out to the desert. Maybe it was just that she had some perspective now, and the hope of a plan fermenting in her brain. A way out, an end date, a happy ending that had a chance of actually happening. Not the all-encompassing dread of being a quivering hostage waiting to be used for leverage, or a prisoner of war desperate for rescue, or a shiny trophy waiting for a polish. She had a role, now, and she was going to play it til it played out.

Days, presumably, but possibly weeks passed before she was finally summoned to see Aizen. She spent the time training with Ulquiorra again, and it was a completely different experience than before. He still ran her ragged, but they often paused for discussion mid-stream, with him advising and her asking questions as best as she could form them. That was difficult on its own, since their abilities were so fundamentally unlike each other, but there was also the fact that his destructive capabilities were so awesomely grand, and hers were so vanishingly minimal. Tsubaki stung plenty hard, but he was the fine point of a pen, a tiny, targeted application of force, and not the wrecking ball of a fully-matured Cero. Still, it forced her to innovate, and she worked more and more on her defensive skills, until it took a small effort on Ulquiorra's part to break her shields. You know, two taps instead of one. That was less encouraging, but it was still progress.

Ulquiorra also advised her, in short, clipped lectures, on how to navigate the court of the Espada, "if you absolutely must." Orihime was eager enough to avoid it altogether, but she knew she couldn't afford another gaff like the one she'd made—however long ago now—in the throne room, especially after Ulquiorra informed her that Aizen probably would have discretely sent for her that same day if she had said nothing. Now, with everyone watching to see how Aizen would react to her impertinence, it had to be a tasteful production, a deliberate counter-power-play.

 _How tiresome_ , she thought. She felt like she'd been waiting years to see him since her dream. She wanted to test him, to see if he really was capable of such vivid human emotions, or if it was just wishful thinking on her part. The dream was so much clearer in her head now than the real memory; it was hard to keep in mind that he hadn't really held her, and she hadn't really looked into his eyes and felt his heart beating against her hand, and that the pad of his thumb hadn't really swept across her bottom lip. Sometimes she felt herself relive the feeling, that electric spike of _something_ that made her heart race and her breath shorten for an instant before she snapped out of it.

Finally the day came, and Orihime found herself fidgeting as Ulquiorra led her to the meeting place Aizen had set.

"Please remember what I've told you about proper etiquette," Ulquiorra said. He seemed almost nervous as well, no matter how unthinkable that was. "I'll be present, of course, but it would be—unwise for me to interfere, since Lord Aizen will surely have topics on his mind to discuss."

"You think so?" Orihime asked.

"Why wouldn't he?" Ulquiorra asked. "You've been gone quite some time, and he has only ever shown interest in your development. It should be only natural for him to want to discuss and advise now that you are back."

"I just meant—" Orihime shrugged, shaking off a vaguely premonitory sense of dread. _Does he know?_ she wondered. _Has he guessed that I'm only back for the Hogyoku?_ "I have a few questions to ask him, but other than that, it doesn't seem like much should have changed, or you know, come to light." When Ulquiorra pointedly didn't reply, she deflected, suddenly awkward. "I mean, it's not like Grimm and I went on a—one of those Antarctic missions to collect core samples or whatever, like a research trip."

Ulquiorra was quiet. Suspiciously so.

"Um, right?" Orihime asked, and Ulquiorra cleared his throat. Alarms went off in Orihime's head. "Right?"

"Lord Aizen may, in fact, wish to discuss some—observations—that were made during your travels."

They were headed down a steeply sloping corridor that looked vaguely familiar—maybe it was one of the meeting rooms Aizen had designated before—but Orihime abruptly stopped trying to place it. "Observations," she repeated.

"Indeed."

"I'm pretty sure Grimm didn't take any notes."

"That is fine," Ulquiorra said. "It would not have been necessary for him to do so."

Orihime stopped walking.

"Do you mean—" she swallowed. "Are you saying there's…footage?"

Ulquiorra stopped a few paces ahead of her, but didn't turn around. There was a long pause, and Orihime's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

"Are you serious?" Orihime asked. "Oh, my god, were you—you were recording the whole time, weren't you?"

"I'm sure it wasn't the _whole_ time—"

"You were just walkin' around here one-eyed the whole time, weren't you?" Orihime pressed louder, heart already racing as she imagined Ulquiorra's detachable eye floating unseen behind her and Grimmjow, listening in to every conversation, watching every move, recording every failure and personal moment. "Uli, are you kidding me right now?!"

"Your human notions of privacy are hardly of any import or consequence to Lord Aizen—"

"Oh, my god, oh, my god," Orihime breathed, her face searing hot under her fingertips. "I really cannot believe you guys."

"You should not have become so comfortable in the first place then," Ulquiorra said. "And on that note, it is hardly appropriate for you to call me by a—" he frowned, "a pet name."

"Yeah, well, get used to it, sweet cheeks," Orihime said. "You should have thought about your precious personal preferences before you videoed me washing and sleeping and using the restroom for however many weeks." Even saying it made her physically cringe, like her stomach was caving in.

Ulquiorra sniffed. "Your concerns—more accusations, really—are totally unfounded," he said. "I am fully capable of blinking during those periods." Hearing that made Orihime almost fall to the ground in relief.

"Well, thank god for that, at least," she said, closing her eyes in thanks as they started walking again. "Still not thrilled, but I'll take it."

Of course, because Ulquiorra was Ulquiorra, he just had to go on. "However, you should be aware that it was not for your benefit that those times were cut from the footage. Such times are simply below Lord Aizen's note. Should they ever become required, however, you should try to accept now that your preferences will not be considered or indulged."

"Great," Orihime murmured. Just one more reason she would need to have her wits about her. Stilling and unmaking the Hogyoku was a pretty lofty goal as it was, but it would be impossible if she were to be placed under constant supervision, even to the tune of monitored bathroom breaks. She would have to cultivate whatever trust she could, however she could.

The corridor ended abruptly in a sharp curve to the left that Orihime recognized at once. Her breath ran short as she thought of the door that would be around the corner, the high, airy chamber beyond that-the cold one with the circular firepit at the center. Her skin prickled as she remembered the chill of the open room, and the heat of the crackling fire, and that electric shock went up her spine again as her fingers rose to her lips.

"Are you well?" Ulquiorra asked suddenly, and Orihime blinked to find him staring at her.

"Yes, uh—" Orihime breathed out once to steady herself. "We've been here before, I just realized." Ulquiorra gave her a strange look which, like most of his looks, was almost totally unreadable. "Haven't we?"

"Yes." Ulquiorra opened his mouth as if to continue, but seemed to change his mind as he turned the corner. Orihime sped up to follow close behind, and was about to ask, but then almost ran into someone as she turned the corner after him.

There had been no footsteps other than hers and Ulquiorra's in the corridor, so the unfamiliar figure took her totally by surprise. Orihime yelped, and her hands went up automatically as she froze. The woman did, too.

"Oh, excuse me, I didn't—"

The woman was staring at her with the same look on her face that Orihime could feel on her own—and her hands were raised in the same way—

And another Ulquiorra was standing beside the woman as well, because it was a reflection, and Orihime had not recognized herself.

"What," she said, and watched the woman's—the other Orihime's—her own—mouth move, "on earth."

"I suppose it has been some time since you last saw a reflective surface," Ulquiorra said. He didn't look at the mirror. "It can be a shock."

That was putting it mildly, Orihime thought. She was rooted to the spot. She couldn't look away.

The Orihime in her head—the Hime her friends had known and loved and tolerated—was shorter than this. Her eyes were wider, her skin flushed and tan and healthy, her pupils dilated in surprise like a deer in the headlights. She was cute. Her hands fluttered. Her breasts were full and bouncy—some people had even said too bouncy, that it was distracting and indecent—her body softly curved. She wore warm pastel colors—modestly, almost childishly styled in apology for her distracting figure—that wouldn't clash with her bright, board-straight ginger hair.

The woman in the mirror looked back at her in shock and confusion with sharp, intense eyes that narrowed and swept down, then up, assessingly. Her chin-length hair was a deep raw amber, no longer a bright and citrusy orange. It was sheared in a sharp diagonal cut, slightly uneven, a bit wavy and carelessly rumpled, and hung longer in the front. A few strands trailed over her right eye and caught in her pale eyelashes as she blinked. Her body still curved under her stark pearl-white and ink-black robes, but it was tightly wound, dense and lithe from weeks and months of slow, exhausting toil in the wind-whipped desert. Her skin was pale, washed out by moonlight, and her cheekbones were sharp and high. Her brows seemed to hang lower and straighter over her eyes, and cinched together in concentration. She had a wry quirk to her mouth that hadn't been there before, though it faded as one hand rose to her lips in a gesture that Orihime realized suddenly had become a constant unconscious habit.

"That's—" Orihime's eyes welled with tears, but she couldn't look away from the lie. The other woman didn't look like someone who would cry, and yet—

"That's not me," she said quietly. Even her voice sounded strange now. Like she was hearing a recording of it: softer and lower and smoother, but with a bladed edge like a river pebble washed one way for too long. "That's not me. That's not who I am."

Unbelievably, even more unbelievably than what she saw, was what she felt. Ulquiorra's cold, hard hand touched hers, and two fingers pressed gently against her palm. Finally she was able to rip her eyes away from the mirror. She stared uncomprehendingly down at the back of her hand where his thumb touched her skin—it was more of a soft pinch than a hand-hold—and then looked up to his face. It was as still as it ever was, but his eyes were soft and unfocused.

"We all transform when we come here," he said. "Sometimes multiple times. It is—" his eyes flicked to his own reflection and then away, as if he couldn't bear to look. "It can be difficult to accept. It leads to—questions. You will not find many mirrors here for that reason."

It was stupid, Orihime thought lucidly as the tears threatened to fall, to be so attached to her physical form. To mourn it. It wasn't who she was, but—she had identified with it. Melded with it. Molded her personality around it, and interpreted how others treated her through her own long-standing perception of it. Losing some weight, gaining some muscle, growing—had she really grown six inches? she was as tall as Ulquiorra in the mirror—shouldn't have made her question who she was. Her mind was the same…

But the woman's eyes were sharp and watchful in a way that had made Orihime flinch and quail away before she realized it was her own face that was scaring her—and she knew suddenly that her mind wasn't the same. She didn't look at people and events the same way, with the same timorous admixture of hope and dread. She'd felt almost no internal conflict when she'd faced down Menoly and Loly in the street however many days ago. She'd felt nothing but a slight rueful contempt when they cowered away from her; when they'd attempted to taunt her, none of their hurtful slurs had landed. She hadn't even cared when her hair was shorn off, she realized. The long, silky hair her dear brother had asked her to grow out, with the strange, unnatural color she'd been abused and humiliated for having, by no fault of her own, to the point that she'd had to be protected by Tatsuki. After all her hair had meant to her, good and bad, all her life...she'd felt nothing but the pleasing lightness of having it gone.

 _You're not who you were when you came here,_ Grimmjow had told her. _The change has been surprisingly rapid._

"Reality is—" Ulquiorra started, releasing her hand, "more fluid here. Physicality bends and reshapes more rapidly than evolution progresses in your world. It is one reason why Lord Aizen chose to build Las Noches here rather than in one of the other worlds. The effects on you, as a Whole and a human, not a soul or a Hollow, will naturally be different than what we have seen, but—"

"But what?" Orihime asked in a whisper.

"The effect that fluidity has had, and will continue to have on your power, may cause you to—" Ulquiorra grimaced, and shook his head. "We don't know yet. It is likely that your power, which manipulates time and the…adherence of reality to beings and objects, may continue to evolve in ways we are not able to fully anticipate, and may not be able to measure at all."

"I don't know what that means, Uli," Orihime said, turning her face away. She couldn't look at herself anymore. She looked so much older—she suddenly felt so much older.

 _How long has it been_ , the Hime in her head wanted to scream. _How long how long how long—_

"It means you will have to trust—and guard—yourself. Keep your own counsel."

"Trust no one?" Orihime asked, and she felt that wry, alien quirk tug at her mouth. "Not even you?"

"More like—take nothing for granted," Ulquiorra said, and sighed. "It's not my place to discuss it any further. I am sorry. It is Lord Aizen's prerogative."

Orihime's jaw tensed. "He doesn't own me," she said, with force that surprised her…but also didn't. At all.

"No," Ulquiorra said, and actually smiled. It looked like it hurt. "But he does own me."


	8. Chapter 8

Aizen was standing by the fire, hands behind his back, looking up at an image hanging in midair. One of Ulquiorra's reels of magic-eye footage.

He didn't turn around as Orihime came in. She was glad. She was still lost in the haze that had descended when she stepped in front of that mirror with Ulquiorra. She thought she might be lost for a long time yet, but any extra moment she had to pull herself together felt like a monumental blessing.

"I'm sorry about the mirror," Aizen said softly, and Orihime jolted. His voice was different—or at least different from the throne room. There was nothing mocking or teasing in it, first of all, but more than that—he did sound genuinely sorry. Sympathetic. "I thought it might be best for you to find out here, before any more time passed. And before we saw each other again."

Orihime blinked. That sounded—what? She blinked and cocked her head like she was trying to catch a distant voice calling her name. It niggled at her.

"I—thank you," Orihime said, shaking her head to clear it. "You're right—I wasn't prepared, but it's better to know."

Aizen nodded, back still to her. His shoulders heaved once with a sigh, and she followed his gaze to the floating image panel. She blinked, lips parting in surprise, and stepped forward.

It was her, because of course it was—Ulquiorra had just told her what to expect—but it was a her that was completely different even from what she'd just seen in the mirror. In the film, she looked more or less like she did now. It was what she was doing.

Even from the wide distance and the extreme high angle, she recognized the scene. The rays of moonlight through the porous surface of the forest floor, as she'd fought a swarm of the hive-mind hollows.

Then-Orihime was scrambling for high ground, practically throwing herself between tree roots as wave after wave of tapewormy monstrosities pelted after her. The problem was that once they broke apart and started whistling through the air, they were almost impossible to pin down. It was an evasion game from then on out. Orihime's shield blazed and broke and blazed again, over and over, protecting her back, then her sides, then from above when Grimmjow yelled at her to look up. She leapt, inhumanly high and far, and twisted in the air as the three worms she'd just dodged showed her their unprotected broadsides—finally, an opening. Her right hand flew out, fingers splayed, and Tsubaki ripped through them. She dropped as they disintegrated, and then she was up again, already looking for the next threat as Tsubaki coursed back to her open hand. Her loose hair billowed in a messy wave as she cast from side to side, and Present-Orihime's eyes widened at the look on her face as then-Orihime swung her left arm wide to hurl a shield against another squirming riot of worms that was readying to untangle and launch itself up after her. It hit, pinning them to the side of a huge root, and held them down and together in a clump just long enough for Tsubaki to fly back out from her outstretched hand. She broke the shield just as he hit, and a savage cry of effort tore from Orihime's mouth as he punched into and through the tough, rubbery mass.

 _Good God,_ Orihime thought, watching herself hack and slash with wild abandon, _I've gone completely native._

"I remember this," she said, pointing absently. "It was while we were below. This was the—" she didn't know how she knew, when there had been so many, "the twelfth encounter, just before we found the controlling Adjuchas nest."

Aizen nodded, but still didn't face her. His right hand was at his mouth, the knuckle his index finger pressed over his lips thoughtfully. From where she was standing, she could see his cheek pouching out with a small smile.

"I particularly like this part," he said, and tapped his finger in the air. His posture was hunched, intent, left arm crossed over his ribs, right elbow braced on the back of his wrist. She supposed he'd watched this before, like a sports nut rewatches match-ups and games to get the full play-by-play.

In the film, Orihime—caught in open ground this time, with dozens of enemies between her and Grimmjow—spun again, but not just once. She turned twice, then three times as her hands and wrists crossed in a weaving pattern overhead, then threw her arms wide, both palms out. Sand and light and leaves and rocks and enemies flew up and away from her position like a bomb had gone off, and then a sharp-edged golden wave raced away from her on all sides, slicing through anything it touched. She hadn't noticed at the time, but Grimmjow actually leapt out of the way, too, sinking his hand into a treetrunk like it was butter to hold himself out of danger, and then dropped back down once it passed.

"Whoa," Orihime said, blinking. It was a little embarrassing to see herself this way, but it also brought tears to her eyes for some reason.

"How is it done?" Aizen asked.

"Uh," Orihime shifted on her feet, and her voice caught. She cleared it and tried to focus. "I store up the power from a shield during the turn—then mix it with Tsubaki's force and release it all at once. It's a time-delay-energy-surge thing, I think. I'm not sure." She laughed a breathy little laugh. "Didn't know it was quite that dramatic."

"Beautiful," Aizen breathed, and Orihime blushed fiercely. "It's like you're dancing."

Aizen finally turned to face her, and Orihime's heart stopped in her chest. She must be dreaming, she thought. She had to be dreaming. Aizen looked like he had in the dream. His eyes were lit up with pride and warmth—and—

"Probably from the time you spent training with Rukia just before you came here," he said, and reached for her. His fingers curled around and through hers, and he pulled her slowly toward him.

"What?" The word came out a strangled gasp. What was happening? Her feet carried her toward him on instinct, totally unresisting, and in a moment he was looking down at her from just a handspan away.

"Isn't her shikai command 'Dance'?" he asked, smiling, and his other hand rose to cup her cheek. "She has such a graceful style. I can never recall the full name of her zanpakuto, though." He chuckled. "It's incredibly long and severe-sounding if I remember right."

Aizen exhaled and shook his head softly as he looked at her. And looked at her, and looked at her. The intensity of his gaze was an almost physical sensation—she could feel it like the tingling pressure that comes just before a touch lands. A sense of waiting, anticipation. She'd felt it when he looked at her in the throne room, too. He seemed to notice her hesitation, and smiled gently.

"It will take some time," Aizen said at last. "But then I've had all this time of watching Ulquiorra's footage to get used to it, though, so it's easy for me to say, I suppose." He brushed the errant strands of hair away from her face, and wrapped his arm—the same arm holding her hand—around her waist to pull her closer against him. He didn't let go of her left hand as he did this, just raised it along with his so that her arm bent at the elbow and crossed behind her back. Their wrists and forearms lay flush against each other across her hips. It made her back arch, and her chest pressed against his. She should have been able to blush—but it felt too good—and too strange—

It was so comforting and intimate—she felt vulnerable but protected—she didn't know why he was doing this—

It did feel strange—but then it became—

Unique. Unique to him, she thought. Whatever that meant.

"Just when I thought you couldn't get any more beautiful," Aizen murmured, sighing. Her eyes fluttered closed as he leaned in, holding her like he couldn't let her go, and pressed his lips against hers. That familiar electric current traveled up her spine again, rooting her to the spot, making her lean in even closer against him. She raised her chin. Their noses brushed. She smelled almonds—no, almond soap—

" _Ori_ …" he breathed, and Orihime's eyes snapped open. His stayed closed as he spoke against her skin. "I missed you so much."

Orihime began to shake—she couldn't help it. She couldn't speak, couldn't think. Aizen's fingers were rough and calloused against her cheek. She knew his touch—she shouldn't know his touch. He'd called her the name he used in the dream—a nickname no one had ever thought to use. Her chest began to rise and fall steeply with rapid, panicked breaths, because it had been a dream, it hadn't been real, and it hadn't been real—it hadn't—been—

Because it hadn't been real, and now it was.

She fainted.

The last thing she heard was Aizen's worried voice calling her name—not her name— _Ori_ —

The last thing she felt was his body, his strong, inexplicably familiar hands holding her against him as she crumpled—

The last thing she knew—the only thing she knew—was that one of them wasn't who the other thought…and that it could only be her, because she no longer knew who she was at all.


	9. Chapter 9

_Would you like to leave?_

The voice was fuzzy—static. White noise resolving into words. Distant, but familiar. A young woman's voice. Maybe a child's.

 _You still can. You've done it before, when things got too hard._

Orihime tried to blink, but her eyes were closed. Or she didn't have eyes anymore. She couldn't tell. It didn't matter. The darkness was soft and absolute, warm. Comforting. She was floating, encased but sublimely unattached. Untethered. There was power in that, she felt. She was wrapped in it like a butterfly in a cocoon, or cradled in it like a fish in a river. A part of her, perhaps, but not hers to command.

Yet.

"Where would I go?" she whispered to the darkness. "After this—after I've changed so much—I can't go home. I can't go back."

She knew it like she knew that the sun would shine and the rain would fall. The home she'd had in Karakura, the _home_ that was everyone she'd loved—it had been too long. There was the uncertain passage of time, but also the intangible yet undeniable passage of change. Entropy that not even she could reject or reverse. Whether it turned out that she'd been gone from the World of the Living for a day or for a hundred years, whether her friends were alive or dead—they had loved and protected and enshrined an Orihime that was gone. Not dead, but—worn away. Crystalized, frozen in amber. A monument buried in the neverending stillness of the always shifting sand. Of time. Of Hueco Mundo.

A tiny point of light blazed in the distance like a falling tear. When it landed, Orihime knew, something would change. A ripple. A shockwave. A choice would be made. It pulsed gently, still falling, as the voice continued.

 _You could, if you wanted. You could have things back the way they were—Or no. The way they would have been._

Orihime's heart leapt, but—

"I don't understand."

 _Neither do we, always. But it is possible. It is within your power now._

Orihime almost agreed, wholeheartedly, without reserve—almost threw herself at that little flickering star—the way out—but she wasn't without reserve.

"Has this happened before?"

 _Not this moment, but similar ones. Twice now, we think, but there have been other—attempts—that failed._

So when? Twice…

It came back to her. That sense of double-exposure. Of two truths laid over a single moment in time. Ichigo healed and not healed. The room with the fireplace, where she was Ori the warrior in one, and Orihime the lost child in another.

"Twice now that I've—gone back in time?"

 _No. Time is not a puddle to be jumped._

"Then how is this happening?"

 _Time—if it exists—is a river. A river is never the same river twice, because the same waters do not pass through it twice. But the water itself—reality—can be shifted, diverted, channelled, when the need is great. Those branching channels can be followed in the same way as the source._

"Then I can't—I can't go back, after all. To before all of this happened."

 _No. Everything you've experienced will always be a truth. But you could pretend. If you wanted. You've pretended before._

Orihime might have wept, but she didn't. Not because she didn't have eyes, but because she was tired of weeping. She had shed so many tears—maybe it was her own tears that had worn her down, and not the sand after all. Whoever she was now—this worn and polished desert creature that didn't cry—still wanted to live. To be.

"I don't want to pretend."

 _Then you will stay in this world?_

It was like she was back at the barrier at the edge of the world. She'd passed up her chance once before, she knew. She might never get another—

"Wait—when you say _this world_ —?"

 _Choose_ , said the voice, as the falling tear—the shooting star—touched down in the distance, and then the voice became the roar of a coming storm, the riveting electric surge of a lightning strike, the crash of a cresting wave.

It became the voice of the river—thrashing and changing and dragging at her legs. A tide of power coursed through her, and she knew that when it reached her hands, a door would form.

On this side she would be—would stay—the Orihime she had become in Hueco Mundo. Ori? _No_ , she thought fiercely. Aizen may have fallen in love with her—because she was finally able to admit to herself that that was what she had seen when she looked at him by the fire—but she would not be his Ori.

But her life would be—would continue to be—one of moonlight and wind and sand—of power and savage joy—of uncertainty and deep mourning.

On the other side would be the girl she was—or would have been—maybe in one of those five lifetimes she'd promised Ichigo.

At that her heart filled—she could do it—for Ichigo—to be with him—

 _Quickly. It is not safe to stay between realities so long. Choose._

"I will—"

But the vision ended before it began, because she didn't want it. It was just another outdated instinct—a habit to return to, even if it was no longer good, nor meant, for her. She couldn't picture it. She couldn't picture Ichigo's face, like she could no longer picture the sun or grassy, daisy-strewn fields or chocolate ice cream and wasabi-sprinkled donuts. He would always be her first love, but she knew that a life with him would never be her truth.

 _You must choose!_

The river was cresting—

"I will stay."

The light winked out.

The voice was silenced.

The river closed over her head, and Orihime awoke to moonlight, and sand, and Aizen.


	10. Chapter 10

Orihime woke in Aizen's arms, still in the fireplace room. She was sitting up, her back cradled against Aizen's chest, and he was leaning against the circular fireplace, breathing hard. He coughed, making Orihime lurch against his chest, and blood splattered her shoulder. There were voices—loud, angry, confused voices—outside.

"—gone far enough, let us in—"

"If Lord Aizen is well, he should—"

"All the Espada except for you have been accounted for at the time of the disturbance—"

Ulquiorra spoke quietly, commanding attention, but his words were impossible to make out. He was interrupted by another soft voice, and then a heavy rumbling blast shook the mirrored doors, and a shockwave rippled beyond and into the room. Aizen coughed again, but moved Orihime aside and stood slowly up as the doors buckled inward, and black, acrid smoke puffed and leaked through the seams. He limped a few paces ahead as the unmistakable surge of a Cero built on the other side of the door, putting himself between Orihime and whoever was breaking in. The doors flexed inward again, and the sound of breaking glass—the mirror—reached Orihime's ringing ears.

"What's happening—"

"Don't speak," Aizen whispered, voice popping wetly, and he choked. "Don't move." Orihime flinched as he put his hand to his waist, to his zanpakuto. " _Shatter, Kyoka Suigetsu._ "

The doors burst inward.

A tall blonde woman, the third Espada, Halibel, strode into the room, wreathed in flame and smoke, pushing Ulquiorra ahead of her like a captive of war. Several other Espada and their numerous Fracciones filed into the room behind her, casting suspicious glances here and there. Starrk and Barragan, numbers one and two, were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Grimmjow.

"Lord Aizen," Halibel said in a soft, somber voice, and bowed, still holding Ulquiorra by the nape of his neck. Ulquiorra bore this without expression, but Orihime's heart clenched in her chest when she saw that his entire left side had been burned to the bone. What she'd thought had been soot was really blood, black blood, and it was dripping down his white skin, shoulder to arm to fingertips from a horrific gash across his neck and shoulder. She could see his number four tattoo clearly, for the first time, and the Hollow in his throat. "We felt a surge of—something from your location. Are you well?"

"Do I look unwell?" Aizen asked, and Orihime blinked as her eyes crossed. She could hear two voices, see two images, laid over each other. The illusion stood tall, hands behind his back, a smirk on his lips. His voice was cool, mocking. The other—the truth—was stooped in pain, holding his ribs, barely standing behind the cardboard cut-out of the illusion. His voice was thick, asthsmatic, and popping with the blood gathering on his lips.

"I—of course not, my lord," Halibel said, and dropped her eyes. Orihime thought Halibel was looking at her, at first, but her eyes were unfocused, deferential, when they landed on Orihime. She couldn't see her at all, she realized. She held absolutely still.

"Well, then," Aizen said. Orihime heard his voice wheeze painfully in his chest, but the echo of his voice practically chuckled in amusement.

"Is there—" Halibel's keen gaze swept the room one last time, and Orihime held her breath instinctively. "Is anything amiss, my lord?" Halibel asked carefully. "The surge was not one that could be read by our Pesquisa—"

Aizen cut her off with a mild gesture. Blood dripped to the ground at his feet.

"I conduct many experiments in my spare time, Halibel. What little I have of it. I would prefer not to be interrupted again."

A tense moment hung in the air as Ulquiorra cut Halibel a look. Halibel ignored it.

"My lord—"

"Halibel," Aizen said, and for a moment his illusion-voice was not so different from his truth-voice. Tired, weary. Losing patience. "We are very much alike in some ways. Neither of us particularly relish repeating ourselves."

Halibel ducked her head as Aizen went on.

"You may go. And please refrain from damaging my private quarters in the future. No matter how… _eager_ you are to see me."

Halibel took a deep breath, but nodded and let Ulquiorra go with a small shove. He staggered—Orihime fought the urge to rush at him, to catch him—but he kept his feet as Halibel stepped backward to bow. All the others did, as well, and slowly, reluctantly, filed out. One of the Fracciones had the good manners to heave the door back into its frame, and then silence fell.

Aizen and Ulquiorra both hit the floor at the same time, and Orihime scrambled forward, calling up a rejection field as Aizen's zanpakuto rematerialized and clanged against the hard floor. Completely without thought, she dashed to Ulquiorra first, but he pushed her away. Hard enough that she practically flew.

"What are you _doing_?" he hissed, eyes wide, and Orihime staggered under the weight of his glare. "Tend to Lord Aizen at once!"

"But—"

"You must!"

Orihime's eyes lost focus—not for the first time, lately, she was at war with her own body. Part of her was fixated on the obviously horrible wound Ulquiorra had suffered in the attack on the door. She wanted to go to him first, because he was her friend, and she barely knew Aizen. Aizen had stolen her, locked her away, threatened her friends, he was threatening her whole hometown, thousands of lives—and he was fine, anyway, wasn't he? He had no visible wounds other than a bloody lip, and his body was—

She looked at Aizen as he lay on his back on the floor, completely still. His eyes were open, but unseeing, glazing over. His reiatsu was present, but fading. It was…unraveling, she realized. Unmaking. Something—she didn't know what—had done what not even the concerted efforts of the Gotei 13 had managed to do. Something was killing Aizen Sosuke, leeching away his very essence, and she had a feeling it was her.

In a cold, dire moment of clarity, Orihime realized it. This could all be over. It could all end: the threat of the Hogyoku, her imprisonment, Ulquiorra's enslavement. And all she had to do…was nothing.

She stood over Aizen, hands frozen over her Santen Kesshun. Just nothing. Ironically enough, doing _nothing_ was what she'd been training for her whole life up until a few months ago. It was all she'd been good for, and maybe it was all she needed now—

But then a scream rose from her chest like something was punching its way out—and Orihime knew at once that she was in danger of going mad. She grabbed at her head, fingers clutching her clips and knotting in her hair, but the scream was swelling up against her skin, writhing, fighting her for control. Its hands were slipping against the inside of her body, grasping and tearing as it climbed out of wherever it had been lurking to wear her like too-small clothes. It was powerful—alive—vibrating with intent. Her whole body shook, convulsing, as she fell to her knees beside Aizen. Even if the scream couldn't find its grip on control, she could hear it, and it could still tear her apart.

The scream was screaming that Aizen was dying, dying, _dying, what are you doing, you horrible creature, you thief, you monster—_

Something hit her across the face, and Orihime's eyes snapped back open. It was Grimmjow—he'd slapped her, but only hard enough that she was seeing spots. It cleared her head, gave her something to hang on to as she caught her breath.

"Get your shit together, princess," Grimmjow snapped, inches from her face, teeth bared. "Why the fuck did I drag to the edge of the world and back if you're just going to panic now?"

His hand was hot, searing, on her arm as he dragged her roughly toward Aizen.

"Do the thing," he said. " _Now._ "

"I told you I wasn't his ally—"

Grimmjow spun on her, seething. "If he dies, everything dies with him," he said. "Including you. Do it."

Orihime was about to argue, but the scream was still in her chest, and it was stronger than Grimmjow's threats. It was finally taking over, guiding her hands, and a bright golden halo encased Aizen where he lay staring at the ceiling. She felt for it automatically, falling into a trance as she sought the change—the damage—to reel it back. But it was nebulous, she felt, slippery and uncertain, and the worst was hard to find. Like a deep, permeating bruise—or no—his whole body, whole being, was eroding from the inside out. For no reason at all.

"I can't find the epicenter," she murmured, and the field fuzzed and cracked.

"Just do all of it, damn you," Grimmjow said.

"That's not how it works—"

"Then figure it out."

He wasn't beside her anymore. He was leaning over Ulquiorra a few feet away, hands shaking as they hovered over his wounds.

"Do not touch me," Ulquiorra rasped, without feeling.

"Shut the fuck up, Four," Grimmjow said, jaw tight, and began to gather Ulquiorra up into his arms. Ulquiorra cried out as Grimmjow lifted him, and his bloodied hand twitched and grasped at Grimmjow's loose waistcoat and left a black handprint on his bare chest. Something about the scene almost broke Orihime's heart, and she felt Ulquiorra's reiatsu flex and destabilize—

"Out of time," Grimmjow said, suddenly beside her again, and grunted as he maneuvered Ulquiorra under the halo. "Stretch your legs, kid, you can get 'em both at once."

"But I can't find the source," Orihime gasped, desperate to make him understand. "It's—without a cause, I can't find anything to reject—"

"It was you," Ulquiorra said suddenly, eyes fluttering open to fix on her. "It happened again—"

"What?" Orihime gasped, but Grimmjow cut them both off—he was all action, always, but Orihime didn't know how much good it was going to do in this case.

"Focus on Uli, then," Grimmjow said, catching her hand to steady her, but his was shaking, too. His eyes were wide, pupils narrow with panic. "Work the field for him, and maybe it'll work on Aizen, too."

"Do not listen to him," Ulquiorra said, eyes flashing. "He is only trying to save me—"

"Stop. Talking. Now." Grimmjow ground the words out between his teeth. "If you don't have any ideas, stop talking. You," he looked at Orihime. "Try it."

Orihime forced herself to focus, leaning on Grimmjow for strength, and bent her will toward Ulquiorra's wounds. Unlike Aizen's wounds, the cause of Uliquorra's were glaringly obvious, from the deep burns down to his bones to the rapidly blackening handprint on the back of his neck. The fire wasn't done—it was still eating him away, spreading like a virus. Orihime grasped at Halibel's lingering essence—the threads of reality she had imposed on Ulquiorra—and rejected them with all her might. The burns rewound, and his skin paled and thickened and knit together, and the strain in his always-placid features lessened.

Beside him, Aizen began to breathe again, but the progress was slower. Too slow. The entropy was still in play, she felt, and it would shortly outstrip the healing. The scream in Orihime's chest continued to push her—it was pushing her past her limit—pushing against entropy of all kinds—

"Stop," Ulquiorra gasped suddenly, thrashing. His hands rose to claw at his throat, and his mask—the half-mask of his helmet, suddenly began to flex and spread across his face. The black blood on his exposed forearm rippled and spread into a pattern until it covered his skin like a glove—it looked almost like feathers. "Stop—you must not—"

"Keep going," Grimmjow growled, but stuck his hands under the field, just briefly, and dragged Ulquiorra out. For the second his hands were under the field, Orihime could have sworn she saw claws at the end of his fingers.

Ulquiorra was whole again, but still dazed as he put his hands over his spreading mask and forced it back to into its usual shape, breathing hard. He batted Grimmjow's hands—paws?—away, and stood up shakily.

"Focus," he told her, staggering back over, and shoved Grimmjow away again when he tried to steady him. "What did you do?"

"What?" Orihime asked again. "I didn't do anything—I passed out—I—"

Ulquiorra's eyes were hard, searching hers, and suddenly she wondered if he was about to kill her. She'd never seen him like this. Even Grimmjow was unnerved by him—he kept reaching for him, only to flinch away before making contact.

"What," Ulquiorra said again, "did you do?"

"Stop it, Uli, she's trying—"

Ulquiorra finally lost his patience with Grimmjow, and hit him with a palmstrike that sent him flying across the room. Orihime screamed in horror as he hit the wall, and it cracked under his weight.

"Grimm!"

Ulquiorra grabbed her before she could run for Grimmjow, before the field over Aizen could wink out. He had entered a terrible calm, and the storm of his reiatsu increased beyond anything she'd ever felt, pressing her into the ground, pinning her in place like a moth on a board.

"This is the last time I will ask," he said, and Orihime faltered under the crush. "What did you do?"

"I—"

 _You must choose,_ the river had said.

"I made a choice." The words left her mouth before the thought had fully formed.

"What choice?"

"To stay here. In this world." _In this reality._

"Reject it," Ulquiorra said at once.

Orihime blinked at him. "I can't."

"You will."

"What if I—what if I disappear?"

"Then you disappear," Ulquiorra said, and a horrible pit formed in Orihime's stomach. "We still need him more than you."

Orihime searched Ulquiorra's eyes for the feeling she had seen there before—what could only have been a few minutes ago, she realized. Out in front of the mirror, when he'd held her hand, and comforted her in terms so inexpressibly human and gentle she thought she might fall apart even as he held her up. But it was gone. It was like it had never been there. In its place was a yawning static void.

Tears filled Orihime's eyes. Maybe nothing had changed after all, she thought. Maybe she hadn't changed. Maybe she wasn't really tired of crying. Maybe it really was all she was good for—

 _I knew there was more to you than tears and good intentions…_

The scream came back, full force, and Orihime searched herself for the choice she'd made.

 _Walk, don't run._

She couldn't reject her own reality—not again, not so soon after she'd tapped into that river, that wellspring of power and time, and chosen to stay. She knew it instinctively even as she grasped for it—it didn't respond to her calls. The time—or the _timing_ —wasn't right.

 _A small want, then?_

What else had she decided, in that between place? Between times, or realities. She'd decided that she would stay, but—but that she wouldn't be Aizen's Ori. She reached tentatively for that choice, hands shaking as she focused on it as a cause, a source of entropy to push against.

The scream resisted her now, but not with its full will, she felt. It was…reluctant, she realized. Not with the outcome, but with the means. There was something…possessive, or maybe protective, in it. Now it held her back, even as it pushed her forward.

"What the hell do you want from me?" Orihime hissed through her teeth. Ulquiorra seemed to realize she wasn't speaking to him, and he stayed quiet beside her.

The scream went quiet, too…but then she felt it lend itself to her, after all, and she pushed against her vow to not be—

 _Ori_

 _Aizen's hands were in her hair, and aches like hunger pains were ratcheting through her entire body._

 _"Tell me," he whispered, moving against her, and her nails dug into his back._

 _"No," she said, through gritted teeth, and cried out as her back hit the stone wall—_

Orihime jolted, eyes fluttering, where she knelt on the cold stone floor of the fireplace room, and a deep, aching moan left her lips. Her hands fell against the rejection field—it thickened and held her up—and Aizen took a deep breath below the amber light.

"Orihime," he murmured, blinking dazedly, and his hand reached for her knee. She flinched away, but Ulquiorra's gaze pierced her down to the bone.

"Again," he said, and his grip on her arm tightened like a vice.

"No," Orihime gasped. What had she just seen—felt—remembered? Had Aizen really—why was it so hard to believe? She'd spent days, weeks, after her arrival in Hueco Mundo wondering when she'd be raped. "I can't watch—"

"Again," Ulquiorra commanded. "Or I will kill you myself."

Orihime grit her teeth against a sob, and her power flared as the scream's voice resolved in her head: _Again,_ it said, _or I'll torture you like you've tortured me. I'll take from you until there's nothing left—I will rob you—_

"Then help me," Orihime whispered, and the scream laughed bitterly.

 _Very well,_ it said, and another memory hit her, engulfed her like a wave.

 _Aizen's hands were on her thighs, pressing them apart. He was so strong, too strong to resist, and she tore at the bed, thrashing, as she felt his breath, then his lips, then his tongue between her legs—_

"No more," Orihime gasped, and the field blinked out. _That's plenty,_ agreed the scream, and subsided.

"What—" Aizen sat up, breathing heavily. He was stable, but she could feel he was still weak. Faint. "Ori, what happened—"

"You must rest, my lord," Ulquiorra cut in, and pushed Orihime away, slowly but firmly. She knew that touch. It was how Chad had held her back that day at the crater. Like there was nothing she could do but make things worse. She began to shake with cold, hard anger. With regret and confusion and loss. With the knowledge of the mounting violations she'd suffered and never even known.

Ulquiorra reached for Aizen to tug him into a sitting position, then looped Aizen's arm over his shoulders and hauled him to his feet.

"Wait—" Aizen said, but his head lolled to one side.

"She will heal you again soon, Lord Aizen," Ulquiorra assured him, with a cutting glance at Orihime that made clear she had no choice in the matter. "But she must rest, too, before she can dependably do so."

Orihime turned her back on both of them, but the look on Aizen's face haunted her. She wanted to loathe him, to despise him for what she'd just seen him do to her, but she felt next to nothing as she stalked away to where Grimmjow lay groaning, face down on the cold floor. Blood was coursing down across his eyes from a deep gash on the back of his head.

"Come on," she said to him, and opened another rejection field as his hand rose, trembling, to touch the wound, but then made a warding gesture to push her away. "What," she demanded, jaw tight. Furious tears were welling up, quivering, but unable to fall. "You want to keep this scar, too?"

Her voice was sharp enough to cut. Sharp enough to get even Grimmjow's attention. He looked up at her weakly, addled, but his eyes cleared as they met hers.

"Hasn't he hurt you enough?" she asked, and her voice broke.

A long moment passed as they looked at each other. Orihime couldn't guess what she must look like to him, and her eyes would barely focus on his face. She was too conscious of Ulquiorra standing perfectly still behind her, Aizen groaning weakly as he hung from his bare shoulder, but she caught Grimmjow's slight nod. He dropped his hand and she went to work, patching him for the moment, but the damage would need more concentration than she was capable of just then, and she knew they couldn't stay where they were. She stopped the bleeding, then pulled him to his feet. He leaned heavily against her, and together they looked over the fireplace at Ulquiorra and Aizen. It was like looking across a great rift and realizing there was no bridge. No way back, or forward, for either party. Just a long fall down. She suspected Grimmjow felt the same way.

"Can you use your flash step?" she asked. Grimmjow nodded groggily, and his head sagged against her shoulder. She looked up at Ulquiorra again—but his eyes were on Grimmjow. She couldn't look at Aizen. "Then get us out of here."

Orihime wanted the desert. Wanted the clean simplicity of the sand and wind. Wanted to stand in it until it wore away her foreign, sullied body and dried up her foolish tears, once and for all.

But Grimmjow took them somewhere she'd never been before. He took her to his tower. Sometimes she forgot he was one of the Espada at all. He refused to engage in the court, other than to get surly and start flipping the others off, and he was always alone. She'd never seen any of his underlings, and unless he was bragging, he never talked about himself. It was strange to be reminded now that he had a life, a home, outside of the desert. But she knew next to nothing about that life, and his home was completely empty.

"Your friends killed my Fracciones," he explained when she looked around. "But at least no one will bother us, or go spreading rumors."

Orihime nodded and helped him over to a low, long couch. The revelation that her friends had killed his couldn't even land. He felt like all she had to hang on to, and she refused to let anything, even such a horrible thing to know, wedge itself between them now.

They both collapsed, breathing hard, and she automatically moved to call up a rejection field, but he pushed her hands down. But not harshly, or angrily. Softly. Even his touch was cooler than it had been.

"Give yourself a minute," he said, panting. "Even I can see something's got you fucked up."

"I'm fine," she said, and he laughed weakly.

"Don't be such a chick," he said, but without any force. He didn't let go of her hand. "I don't want you slipping up and wiping my memory or something."

"I—" Orihime paused, frowning as her brain chewed this idea over. "I don't think I could do that."

"You could," he said, and sagged down to his side, wincing. "Probably. I think you can probably do anything."

She helped him roll onto his stomach, and his scarred hand fell over the edge of the couch to trail listlessly against the carpet. She tried to pull off his waistcoat to examine the damage to his back, but he couldn't lift his arms. She called out Tsubaki to slice it away with barely a thought, and she grimaced as she looked at him. His whole body was a wreck, with broken ribs sticking up at unnatural angles beneath the skin of his back. His breath hitched painfully as he breathed.

"God," Orihime whispered. "How could he do this to you?"

Grimmjow huffed through his teeth. "Very, very easily," he said. The words barely made it out, but he kept talking. "He's Four, I'm Six. With Espada, that's a sizable gap. But don't tell anyone I said that."

"Is he really that much stronger?" Orihime asked, shaking her head in disbelief. "Or do you just—"

"Let him?"

"Yeah."

Grimmjow sighed and closed his eyes. "Both."

Orihime's hand found his again, and she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "Do you want me to try again?"

"If you're ready, yeah," Grimmjow said. "This sucks pretty bad, I gotta say."

Orihime smiled sadly, and a golden field formed over Grimmjow. It was difficult to find the cause, nebulous like Aizen's all-over, soul-deep wound had been. It wasn't a Cero, or any particular special ability of Ulquiorra's that had caused it. Just force, powered by some raw emotion she couldn't parse. She grasped at it, any of it, and Grimmjow spoke again as the healing took hold.

"There's no real reason for him to be even as low as Four, though," he said. "I know he's got something else, some kind of reserve he's never tapped. At least not so as anyone would notice it."

"Then how do you know?" Orihime asked automatically, eyes closed in concentration. The wounds didn't want to heal. They were fighting her, hanging on. She didn't know if it was Grimmjow's stubbornness or Ulquiorra's influence that was resisting her, but it was like the damage itself was refusing to leave without being _understood_ first. Grimmjow was quiet for a minute as she worked, but slowly, slowly…breathed easier.

"I can feel it," he said at last. "I can feel how much he's holding back. That's why I push him. I want to see what he's capable of."

Orihime opened her eyes to watch the bones shifting back into place in Grimmjow's back.

"Why?"

"Because I know it'll be—beautiful," Grimmjow said. Orihime's hand clenched around his, and he gripped her fingers lightly. The scarred flesh from Ulquiorra's Cero all those months ago, at the start of their desert journey, tightened and pulled like paper. She ran her thumb along it gently. "But I'm not strong enough to push him that far. I don't know if anyone is…maybe your friend will manage what I can't, though. Someday."

"My friend?" Orihime asked, eyebrows cinching.

"Kurosaki."

"Oh." She should have been able to feel something at the mention of Ichigo's name, but she couldn't. She couldn't even hope it wouldn't come to that. An hour ago, she'd had a role she was going to play. She was going to save her friends. All of them, even if they couldn't conceive of peace between each other enough to even want it. Now she had nothing. "Maybe."

Grimm laughed, and winced as the rush of air shook him. "I mean, if he can do it, push Uli that far, I'll even forgive him for getting my arm chopped off, if he'll just let me watch." He paused, considering, and tilted his head to cut Orihime a look. "That sounds dirty, doesn't it?"

Orihime smiled fondly. Always indomitable, Grimm was, she thought. Relief—strong and heady and blooming—filled the emptiness inside her, and she leaned down to kiss his cheek.

Grimmjow's skin flushed hot as she touched him. It was like tipping back a fresh cup of coffee too far, too fast—it burned enough to make her gasp and pull away in shock. He stared at her, unmoving, rigidly still. The amber glow above him flared, and Orihime looked down to see his flesh rippling, its color balancing, faster than before, as the damage rewound. She touched him again, and let her fingers drift down his ribs. He quivered—was he seriously ticklish?—and the healing sped up again. He had been fighting her after all, she realized. He couldn't let Ulquiorra's touch go, even the painful remnants of it. Not without something to replace it.

She leaned down again, bracing her hand against his back, and pressed her lips against his. He inhaled, hard, and the field flared again, so bright Orihime had to close her eyes, so bright it left afterimages in her retinas. She almost didn't feel the heat of his mouth, like a furnace, as he rolled onto his side and reached for her—and pulled her up onto the couch, and then on top of him.

Grimmjow's tongue was soft against hers, and his hands were steady and—surprisingly gentle. He kept them over her clothing, but she could feel the heat pulsing through his fingers, almost unbearable even through the dense layers of fabric.

The field flickered and broke an instant later as Grimmjow returned suddenly to full health, but Orihime didn't pull back, and he didn't push her away. Even just that felt good, and she was so grateful to him in that moment for not pushing her away that she felt tears gathering in her eyes.

"What are we doing?" Grimmjow asked, voice strained, against her mouth.

"I don't know," Orihime answered, shaking her head, and kissed him again. His skin was burning her, chapping her lips, drying her tears before they could fall, but she pushed her hands through his wild blue hair and groaned. She felt like she was falling—not into him, but into herself. She clung to him like she was _this close_ to sailing off a cliff. "Maybe we don't need to know."

Grimmjow's breath rushed out of him like he'd been struck, and his hand gripped the fabric of her dress so hard it tore. His knuckles burned where they touched the skin of her back. "Neither of us is who the other wants," he said, but Orihime shook her head.

"I don't want anyone," she said, because it was true. She'd thought—so briefly, there in the fireplace room—that she wanted Aizen. She hadn't understood why, but she'd wanted him to look at her like that, to hold her, and kiss her and comfort her. But it had to have been an illusion. The scenes that the scream in her chest had showed her—that other self that was under her skin, the self that had called her a monster, a thief—the memories she was rediscovering, even now, as Grimmjow's hands coasted over her body, couldn't have lied.

She could still feel Aizen's hands on her—that touch that should have been foreign, but wasn't. He had used her before, and she'd never even known. She'd told him no in that first memory, and he hadn't stopped. "Ori" was a lie, an illusion, she knew it—or at least she couldn't conceive of anything else, and the scream wasn't speaking up right now. It had left her alone. It was hanging back, lurking again. She'd only ever felt it in Aizen's presence, she realized. It had forced her to comply, to heal him when she knew she shouldn't. It had shown her horrible things, and laughed at her pain.

She let it go. If the scream was Ori, she was an illusion. A plant put there by Aizen to tie her to him. To manipulate her. She wouldn't indulge it again.

But the image of Aizen's face came back to her as he hung weakly from Ulquiorra's shoulder. The raw longing and confusion and regret in his eyes as she'd turned away from him and gone to Grimmjow's side. He'd looked _alone_ —as alone as she'd felt in that moment—

"It's okay, Hime," Grimmjow whispered, voice shuddering, and the old nickname made her rock against him with longing for who she used to be. She'd been alone, then, too—but at least she'd been—what, free? _Simple?_ God, she didn't even know anymore. She hated Hime as much as she hated Ori. As much as Ori hated her. "I know I look like him."

Orihime almost asked—but she knew. She'd always known how much Grimm resembled Ichigo, in face and body and attitude. It was why she'd been so much easier in his presence than the other Espada's. But that wasn't why she was doing this now: she hadn't wanted Ichigo for a long time. She'd wanted someone else, wanted Aizen, even if she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself. She'd wanted to believe he was good and kind and capable of redemption, like he'd been in the dream, and he'd betrayed her. Just like Grimmjow wanted Ulquiorra, and had been hurt and punished over and over for that want.

Grimm wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight against him in his lap. His searing mouth dropped to the hollow of her throat—but he seemed to catch himself, and groaned with frustration and need, and the heat swelled.

"That's one reason I hate him so much," Grimmjow went on. "I hate how much Uli thinks about him. I hate it that Uli protected him, even after his friends killed mine. I hate it that they're both so strong, and that it's just a game to them, when it's _everything_ to me."

Even now the heat was making her sweat and writhe in pain, but she held herself against him desperately as the emptiness threatened to consume her.

"I'm sorry," she said, and her palms singed against his face as he looked up at her. His always-narrow pupils were dilated, with barely any blue left. He heaved a sigh, and his arms relaxed against her as the tension flowed out of him, and heat began to fade.

She did want Grimmjow at that moment, but not truly him—she wanted what he could do for her. She wanted him to wear her away, to cauterize the wounds her Santen Kesshun couldn't touch, to burn away what everyone else—especially Aizen—had done to her. Everyone except him.

"I don't want anyone anymore," Orihime said again. "You're just the last person who's never hurt me." A tear fell from her eyes and sizzled on his cheek like a frying pan.

"And I don't want to," he said, and this time when he kissed her, it was gentle, and comforting, and rueful, and she knew it was the last one. He wouldn't do it again. "You're apparently the only friend I have left."

The moment passed, and the scalding heat subsided to a dull, warm ache, and Grimmjow stroked her hair as she wept against his shoulder, and she ran her thumb across the scar on the back of his hand.


	11. Chapter 11

_You really are a simple creature, aren't you?_

The voice echoed in the emptiness. At first Orihime thought she'd gone back between, to that space between worlds, and that another disaster was imminent—but no. There was no river here. There was nothing.

Orihime turned away, though there was nothing to see, or avoid seeing. There was only the voice—the scream called Ori. It tutted, following her like a swarm of bees.

 _Nope. You're stuck with me, it said, jeering. Sorry, princess. And I mean that. No one's sorrier than I am, actually._

The spiteful words stung, but far less than the hate she could feel behind them. It was bubbling like acid inside her, eroding her away with its caustic loathing. But it felt like it was coming from her, from her own mind. It was her hate, but she didn't want it. She tried to push it away, but it wouldn't go. It was welling up inside her own heart, and she couldn't escape it—there was nowhere to escape to, this time.

She was dreaming. She had fallen asleep beside Grimmjow like she had so many times before. She could feel him radiating warmth against her back like a space heater. He kept her warm here, in the cold desert…only this time they weren't on a tree branch or reclining against a sand dune. They were on a flat white couch in his empty, Fraccion-less tower, where he'd held her as she wept herself into exhaustion, for the first time in so long. Just when she'd thought she had forgotten how to cry for good and all, she'd remembered. She held onto that. It was real. She could still feel the salt on her cheeks. She shook her head.

"You're not real."

The voice laughed, almost a cackle, but there was pain in it, too. Anger and resentment beneath the mania. Fueling it.

 _Oh, you're—that's right, you're not going to 'indulge' me. Isn't that what you decided?_

Orihime almost answered, but held herself back. She wasn't going to play games with herself, even if—or especially if—she was going mad. She tried to wake up, but the voice wouldn't let her go.

 _You're still denying I exist? Even after everything I've done for you—everything I've given you?_ The voice sneered as she thrashed. _Everything you've stolen from me._

It wasn't going to let her go until she answered, she knew. It needed to be heard. Like Grimm's wounds had needed to be understood before he could let them go. But she couldn't just agree with it. She couldn't just say it had a right to hate her.

"I've stolen nothing," she said.

The voice growled and shoved her away in disgust, and Orihime stumbled back toward consciousness.

 _I don't know how I ever thought you'd be any different from the rest of them._

The voice was changing. There was regret and disappointment in it now, and guilt hit her like a wrecking ball. She tried to stay, tried to ask, but the dream was already unraveling.

"Different from who?" she shouted to the bleakness. The last thing she heard as she woke was the voice, so like her own, but so angry, ringing in her ears.

 _Everyone. Everyone else who treated us this way._

 _Everyone else who used me, and then forgot I even existed._

 _Everyone—everyone I betrayed by coming here at all._


	12. Chapter 12

"Hey, Grimm. You awake?"

"Yeah."

"I think I might be two people."

"Just two?"

Orihime and Grimmjow were sitting up on the couch, back to back. It felt good to lean against him. It felt good to have him lean against her. It felt better than sitting in his lap and kissing him like she had for those few, panicked minutes that would never happen again. That had felt like what she needed in the moment, some kind of physical forgetting; maybe it had been what he needed too, but this was what they needed from each other, right now, and in general. Her head dropped back onto his shoulder, and he leaned his ear against her temple with a sigh.

"I don't know. Maybe it's more like—like I have another person inside me."

Grimmjow snickered.

"Shut up," Orihime said, but she smiled. That felt good, too. It also hurt. It felt like she shouldn't be able to smile, and that she was betraying someone by doing so. But the horror she'd felt earlier, the sense of violation, was drifting away. She couldn't hold onto it. Maybe she didn't need to. "But do you know what I mean?"

"Sure."

Orihime tilted her head thoughtfully against his. "Really?"

"Obviously." He scoffed. "In fact, just one other person competing for space in your brain sounds like a hell of a vacation to me."

Orihime could barely feel her body. The air in Grimmjow's tower was still, close to body temperature, and without a shifting breeze or chill to bring her sensation, she felt numb and weightless. It was nice.

"What do you mean?"

"Ever tried being a Menos?" Grimm asked with a snort. "It's all just a—a big clusterfuck of memories and selves and you can't tell which is which anymore, until it doesn't even matter, and then you just start eating everyone you touch because you know it'll make you stronger, and if you're stronger, you might finally, finally, know who you are again. You might be able to be alone—or at least alone with yourself—again."

Orihime stared at the ceiling. She didn't want to eat anyone, but she liked the sound of being alone. Or at least alone with herself. She wanted to close her eyes without seeing those memories, without hearing that scream—hearing that voice—mocking her. Calling her a monster, and a thief. Even if it was an illusion planted by Aizen, and Orihime wasn't so sure anymore, it was strong. It was angry. It was like…it was like Tsubaki. Tiny, hidden away, but a force that knew how to sting where it would hurt the most.

"I'm still a human, though," Orihime said suddenly. "I just keep forgetting it. Humans aren't meant to have more than one self tangled up together. We can share our hearts and our bodies, those can break and recover, but—our minds are—"

"Sacred."

"Yeah." She shrugged against his back. "I was gonna say 'fragile.'"

Grimmjow snorted again. "Sacred's better. More elegant."

"It is." It really was the better term, Orihime thought, even if she was surprised to hear any elegant word—including 'elegant'—come out of Grimmjow's coarse mouth. She felt like her mind—her last untouched place—had been violated, along with her trust and her body. But she couldn't tell by whom. She couldn't tell what was illusion; she couldn't tell what was real. She didn't know which memories were hers and which, if any, were fabrications. She couldn't tell how it all fit in with her own evolving abilities, and that in-between place where she'd chosen to stay in Hueco Mundo. It was too much to reconcile: the scream had shown her horrible things, and laughed at her—but it had also hurt. Not just hurt Orihime herself. It had been hurting: she'd felt the bottomless depths of its panic and longing and desperation in the push to save Aizen's life. It was the only thing that had made it possible to do so, even if it had almost cost Orihime her sanity.

 _Who are you?_ she whispered to the dark corners of her mind. _And why do you hate me so much?_

For better or worse, no answer came. There was only an empty, ringing echo of her own voice that asked her the same question back. And she couldn't answer it either. She felt too many ways about too many things…even about one thing. Even about something as simple as a kiss.

Orihime's fingers brushed her lips. She could feel Ichigo's lips there. She could feel Aizen's. She could feel Grimm's.

 _Really making the rounds, aren't we?_

Orihime chuckled wryly to herself.

 _Yeah, I guess so, but—_

But it still felt like Grimm's were the only ones she'd chosen to kiss.

She gasped. If that was true, Grimm had been her first kiss—

But she shook her head. No. No, he clearly hadn't been—even aside from the jumbled memories, she should have felt a "first kiss" way in the moment, if that was the truth. But she'd known the feeling of a mouth on hers, even known the feeling of straddling someone's lap, having someone's arms around her; she'd known what was about to happen if neither of them stopped the other. She'd wanted it to happen, even. It hadn't even felt like that big a deal—just two friends comforting each other. It hadn't felt like a first time for any of it.

She frowned. How could that be? Or how could it be both? She'd pictured her first kiss since she was a child. Fantasized about it. She'd wanted it to be perfect, and then she'd wanted it to be Ichigo, which had felt synonymous with perfect for a long time. Two sets of memories or no, she still felt like the girl who hadn't had the guts to kiss her first love goodbye. Her first kiss had felt like a matter of life and death to her for years, and the longer she'd waited, the harder it had become to give it away. The weight of expectation had held her back, until nothing would have been perfect enough. And now—if Grimm really had been her first—she'd just blown past it in the literal heat of a moment with a friend she didn't even feel that way about. And now she'd never have it…never have it back? Never have it again? Never have it at all? How did it work? Did it matter?

She had lost so much of herself, she realized. That much was indisputable. She just couldn't tell if she'd given it away willingly, or had it stolen.

 _Now you know a little bit of what it's like,_ someone—not her—said to the darkness inside her skull. _Now you get the tiniest taste of what you've put me through._

Orihime's eyes flew open and she sat bolt upright. "What?" she gasped. But the voice was gone. Not even an echo remained.

"Hm?" Grimmjow jolted and sniffed. He'd been falling asleep. "What's up—you say something?"

"Uh—" Orihime blinked. "No, I don't think I did. Just going a little crazy, I guess."

Grimmjow nodded and reached back, over his shoulder, to pat her head. "You'll be alright," he told her.

"How do you know?"

"Because you're still you. Don't worry about it. I'll tell you if you stop being you."

"You already did."

"Did I?"

"Yeah. At the border. You told me I wasn't the same person who came here."

"Oh, right. Well, in some practical ways, yeah, you're not the same," Grimmjow said, perfectly matter-of-fact. "You've changed a lot since you came here, there's no denying how much, but—" He shrugged. "You're still you. You're still kind. You won't stop being you until you stop being kind."

The rush of relief and gratitude Orihime felt at hearing these words was immediately ripped apart by an internal snarl of disbelief. _You have got to be fucking kidding me,_ the voice spat.

"Stop it," Orihime whispered. She curled up, putting her hands over her face.

"Hm? You talking to me this time?" Grimmjow asked over his shoulder.

"No, no, um—" Orihime said, trying to recover. "Still just talking to myself."

Another derisive snarl echoed in her mind. _You never cease to insult, do you know that?_

 _Please_ , Orihime begged. _Just tell me what you mean_. She didn't speak aloud this time, but her lips mouthed the words as she squeezed her eyes shut. The voice laughed. It was a cold, ringing laugh like a bell, and it sent shivers of fear up her spine.

 _I am me. Not you._

A face materialized in the blackness. Her face. Her old face: the face she'd had before she'd gone into the desert. It wavered like a mirage, but unlike a mirage, it came closer. Orihime wanted to retreat, but she was too afraid. She didn't hold her ground so much as give in to total paralysis. The face—so familiar, but also not at all—looked her up and down, sneering as it leaned close.

 _We. Are not. The same._

Ori was angry again. Maybe she never stopped being angry, like Hime never stopped crying.

 _I am not kind,_ she whispered. _Not anymore._

"So, are you gonna tell me what happened yesterday?" Grimm asked suddenly, and Orihime jumped as the trance broke. Her hands were shaking when she touched her face, as if to make sure she still had one.

"Um. I still don't know."

Grimmjow nodded.

"What do you think happened?" Orihime asked carefully.

"Well, I sure as hell have no idea," he said. "I came running when I felt a big power surge. When Halibel and the others showed up, I made myself visible but hung back until they left, and then Aizen's illusion dropped and I saw how bad it really was."

Orihime frowned. "Why hang back?"

"Because I could tell it was you."

 _It was you,_ Ulquiorra had gasped. _It happened again—_

"How did you know it was me?" Orihime asked. "Halibel said her Pesquisa couldn't read it."

"Hime, I wandered around in a forest for months killing vermin with you. I don't need Pesquisa to tell me when you're gettin' up to some shit."

Orihime laughed, but sobered quickly. "Ulquiorra said it 'happened again'…but I don't really know what he meant."

"I do," Grimm said reluctantly. "It felt like that night when you got trapped under that sand dune. The first night we spent out of Las Noches."

Orihime shook her head. "All I did that night was use Tsubaki and a shield to get out of the sand."

"Nah," Grimmjow said, pensive. "There was something—else—that happened. Uli probably recorded it to analyze, but I never got a handle on it. I could barely get a handle on you."

Orihime remembered his arm around her waist, burning and hard as iron, and how he'd screamed at her to "do the thing" and then flown back when her shield activated. "Well, that tends to happen when the person you're trying to grab is pinned under ten feet of sand."

Grimm turned over his shoulder to give her an unimpressed look. "You've literally seen me lift the massive iron gate to the city. Twice. One-handed. You think I can't pull a ninety pound girl out from under some sand?"

Orihime inhaled, but didn't reply. She'd never thought of that. She kept thinking of Grimmjow as a human, she realized. Sometimes he felt more human than she did.

"Nah," he said again, and shook his head. "I can promise you, you were up to some shit that night, even if you don't remember it. Never felt anything like it again, though, until yesterday. Figured you'd need some help, whatever it was."

It was Orihime's turn to reach up and pat Grimm's head this time. "Thank you," she said. "I didn't love the slap, but I did need help."

"There's more to it, though, right?" Grimmjow asked after a moment. "There was something else—whatever happened with Aizen—"

"I don't want to talk about that," Orihime said curtly.

"Well, can't say I was having a radical time, either," Grimm reminded her, and she winced. "Just curious why you'd suddenly feel the need to seduce me—"

Orihime tsked and reached back to flick him on the ear. "Don't say it like that. And besides, it seemed like you needed…something. You were hardly healing at all, and then—"

"No, I noticed that, believe me," he said. "I appreciate your help, however you did it. It's kind of why I'm asking. I get the sense you need something, too."

"Don't you try to 'seduce' me, now," Orihime laughed, using quotey fingers. It was strange that she couldn't even feel embarrassed. "Remember the list?"

"Psh, that fuckin' list," Grimm said, shaking his head. "Still cannot believe that shit."

"Right?" she teased. "The very idea."

"Eh," Grimm shrugged, and nodded. "You might have a point."

In the short silence that followed this exchange, Orihime realized now, if ever, was going to be the perfect time to foray into another super-heated makeout session—but she didn't want to, and Grimm stayed relaxed and equally unheated against her back. She sighed.

"I meant it when I said I didn't want anyone," she said. "I just—can't right now. I saw some stuff when I healed Aizen. Some things I either forgot, or—repressed. I'm not sure."

Now Grimm tensed. "What kind of stuff?"

"Bad stuff." She shook her head. "I still can't hold onto it properly, but…bad. I just keep getting these flashes. I don't know if he hypnotized me, showed me an illusion, or what, but—yeah. When I tried to heal him, it came back. Or some of it did."

Grimmjow turned around on the couch, and she twisted in place to face him, pulling her legs up under her. "From the time before we left for the desert?" he asked. He looked confused. "Didn't you barely see him then? And wasn't Uli always with you?"

Orihime nodded. "I thought so, anyway. I thought I had really clear memories from that time."

"And you think he—tampered with those memories, or—"

"Either he hurt me for real and tampered with my memory to cover it up, or he showed me an illusion yesterday, for some fucked up reason."

"That—" Grimmjow's head tilted and his face screwed up. "Granted, I'm the last one to defend that guy out of hand, but that doesn't sound like him."

"Seriously?" Orihime asked flatly. "You're gonna do this?"

"What?" Grimm pulled back.

"You're gonna tell a woman she wasn't raped just because you don't think the guy is 'like that'?"

"No, come on, I'm not Uli, alright," Grimmjow said, and winced. "I damn near hate Aizen. I follow him because it's important, not because I think he's so great. I trust you way more than I do him by now. I just mean that it doesn't sound like—something Aizen could do."

"His power is hypnosis," Orihime argued, losing her patience. "Illusion."

Grimmjow nodded, but still looked perplexed. "That's what I mean. He can make you see stuff, but not—feel it, or do it. And not _not_ feel it. It only works so far, and not with memories, as far as I know. It's not mind control. Otherwise, he would have just wiped everyone's memory of the event yesterday and not bothered with an illusion."

Orihime wanted to resist this logic, but she remembered how Aizen had released his zanpakuto the day before, and used it to hide her from Halibel's violent presence. She still didn't know why he'd done it, but he'd been adamant that she not move or speak, and she'd known instinctively to comply. She'd even been able to see through it, to see both sides: the truth and the illusion had been equally visible to her. A double exposure of the same moment—

"I don't understand this at all," Orihime sighed, and rubbed her eyes.

"Me, neither," Grimmjow said, and put his arm around her. She let him tug her over against his side. "I'm sorry if he really did hurt you," he went on. "I just—hope there's some other explanation for what you're seeing in those flashes."

"Me, too. Obviously. I just don't see how there could be."

Grimmjow was silent for a long time, and Orihime's eyes began to droop.

"Are you—" he started, but she could hear the conflict in his voice. "Are you sure this hasn't happened before?"

Orihime looked up at him. "What, like deja vu?"

"No, I mean—this thing. This maybe-false memories thing. When we were at the border, you seemed like you couldn't remember whether you healed Ichigo or not. I thought for a minute you were going to fight me over it, actually."

She sighed and nodded. "Something similar, maybe, but honestly I'm still not sure Aizen didn't have anything to do with that either. It's all—really hard to hold onto in my head. It surfaces, but then keeps slipping away before I can parse it."

"Parse?"

"Like detangle."

"I know what the word means," Grimmjow said, chuckling tolerantly, and Orihime flushed. "I just thought it was an interesting choice." He was quiet again for a moment, then inhaled abruptly like he had something to say, but seemed to catch himself.

"What?" Orihime pressed.

"Just—" Grimmjow twisted uncomfortably. "How much do you know…about this other person in your head?"

"Are you restored?"

Orihime nearly jumped out of her skin, and Grimmjow nearly fell off the couch, and both made very awkward noises as Ulquiorra appeared before them with no warning. Between one blink and the next, he was there. His hands were no longer black with blood. They were in his pockets. His clothes had been mended or replaced. He was none the worse for wear, and looking down on their reclining forms without visible interest, though his eyes did linger on Grimmjow's arm where it rested over Orihime's shoulders.

"What do you want?" Orihime snapped, groaning as she sat up. She still had bruises from the day—or whatever amount of time—before. Her whole being felt bruised and creaky and slow to respond, like a car engine that wouldn't quite turn over. But she didn't want to heal herself. She needed some kind of sensation to keep her mind rooted in her body.

"And how did you get in?" Grimmjow asked, sitting up to run a hand through his hair. He couldn't quite look at Ulquiorra. Orihime felt like she couldn't look away.

"I am Four, you are Six," Ulquiorra said blandly, as if this was explanation enough. He looked to Orihime. "Are you restored?"

"Restored?" she repeated, eyes narrowing.

"Rested, then."

"Why?"

Ulquiorra glanced at Grimmjow. "Leave us," he commanded.

" _My_ tower, jackass," Grimmjow said, spreading his hands. Orihime could still see the hurt in his eyes, but his territorial nature was evidently carrying him past his hesitation. "You wanna talk to her alone, book a fucking conference room—"

Ulquiorra reached for him, but a shield formed between them. It crackled with static rage as his hand hit it, but it didn't break. Orihime sent a current of force into it through Tsubaki, and Ulquiorra winced as a shock—that angry little spark—jumped the gap to his hand. That might have been the first time Orihime had ever seen him react directly to pain—but maybe he just hadn't expected it.

Ulquiorra's jaw tightened, and his eyes snapped to hers.

"I won't let you hurt him again," Orihime said. Her voice sounded strange. Empty. She wasn't afraid, but she could tell she should have been. "And anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of Grimm."

Ulquiorra's eyes narrowed as he looked between her and Grimmjow. She'd seen him look at them that way before, like he suspected something. Suspicious of some kind of collusion, maybe? She knew that as fanatically loyal as Ulquiorra was to Aizen, Grimmjow had made it plenty clear he could take or leave the current leadership—although, he had been fairly keen to have her save Aizen yesterday, as well.

"Lord Aizen requires healing," Ulquiorra said at last.

Orihime's hackles went up, but Grimmjow placed a steadying hand on her back. "I stabilized him yesterday," she said, keeping her voice even. "At great expense to myself. I need more time—"

"That stability has been compromised," Ulquiorra cut in. "You are needed at once."

Part of Orihime—the part in her chest, which she now trusted least—almost flew off the couch and ran out the door for Aizen's quarters…but the memories she'd uncovered yesterday were still in her head. Fractured, imperfect memories, floating like detritus in her mind's eye. They were just brief visual clips, devoid of feeling, but—her skin still crawled when she pictured them.

"I do not wish to force you," Ulquiorra said, and Orihime let out a shout of laughter. _What uncanny timing,_ she thought bleakly.

"Yeah?" she said, and the anger beneath the bleakness stirred. "You were ready enough to kill me yesterday if I didn't do what you wanted."

"Those were extraordinary circumstances," Ulquiorra said primly. "I did not particularly relish making the threat."

Orihime waited for the spike of anger—but it didn't come. She felt almost nothing. Almost numb, again. There was only another quiet nudge of urgency in her chest, muted by her own deep—if only partially formed—misgivings about whether she should be helping Aizen, or Ulquiorra for that matter, at all. But she couldn't just sit still and not know. She'd long since lost her talent for doing nothing.

"Do you want me to go?" Orihime asked suddenly, turning to Grimmjow.

He pulled back, obviously surprised to be addressed. "What?"

"Do you want me to help him?" She couldn't say Aizen's name.

"I—" Grimmjow's eyes flicked up to Ulquiorra and away, embarrassed, and then to Orihime, and away. "Yeah, I do. It's important."

Orihime let out a tense breath and nodded. "Fine," she said, and stood up.

"Please put yourself to rights," Ulquiorra said, eyeing her. She twisted to find that the back of her dress was hanging in ribbons along her sides. Torn by Grimmjow, and pretty obviously. When she reached around her ribs to touch it, it felt like claws had rent the fabric down the back. The scraps fluttered like wings. She wondered how she had come away without a scratch, even though he'd burned her, but she supposed he just must have been careful.

She turned back to meet Ulquiorra's gaze. "I thought you said this was urgent."

Ulquiorra said nothing, just waited. She may have won the battle for Grimmjow's honor, but evidently Ulquiorra wasn't going to cave on this. A strange time to stand on ceremony, but…

"Whatever," she said, and snapped a field over her back to mend the tears as she walked. The field moved with her, and she let it run as she headed for the door, but Ulquiorra didn't move. "You coming or what?"

Ulquiorra was watching her carefully. "Do you not know your way to Lord Aizen's private quarters?" he asked.

"That's—" Orihime scratched her ear. "That's where we were yesterday, right? With the fireplace?"

Ulquiorra nodded, and leaned forward with interest as she considered. She wondered, distracted, when he had become so easy to read.

"I don't know. I might be able to, but if we're in a hurry…" she trailed off and shrugged. "And anyway, don't I need a chaperone?" Even as mistrustful as she was of Ulquiorra at that moment, she wasn't eager to be alone with Aizen if she could help it.

"Very well," Ulquiorra said, and led the way without a glance backward to Grimmjow. When Orihime looked back, Grimm barely seemed to see her. His gaze was on Ulquiorra's retreating back, and Orihime had to look away from the unguarded yearning in his eyes.

A few quiet minutes later, Orihime found herself at the entrance to Ulquiorra's tower. She looked up at it, confused.

"Why are we here?" she asked. "I thought you were taking me to—"

"Be silent," Ulquiorra said. As usual, he didn't sound particularly bothered, but there was a tension to his voice that she didn't understand. "We must speak alone, and my tower is protected from interference."

Orihime sighed. "Fine."

Orihime's eyes clouded with tears, just for an instant, as she saw the stairs up to what had been her room. How had it been only yesterday? Ulquiorra's tower had felt almost like home to her. She'd settled right in after coming back from the desert. She hadn't even asked if she was still welcome, or if accomodations had changed. She'd just gone straight up to her room for a bath, and even Ulquiorra's immediate, unexpected intrusion had felt funny, and homey. Like a brother poking his head in to grab a hairbrush while she was in the shower. It made her think of Sora—how long had it been since she'd thought of him?—and her heart clenched as she realized that she now pictured him only as a Hollow. It clenched again as she realized that the image no longer bothered her like it once had. Now it felt familiar. Hollows were all she was used to, anymore.

Ulquiorra led her down, not up, into the tower. Through a trapdoor, even. She wondered if he was hiding Aizen down here for some reason…but why? Why all the hush-hush? And why had Aizen hidden himself—and Orihime—behind that illusion yesterday?

 _You really are a simple creature, aren't you, Hime?_

"What did you say?" Orihime asked.

"I did not speak," Ulquiorra said, glancing back at her. Her heart fell. Great. Ori again. "It is not yet safe to do so."

Orihime waited for another internal jibe from Ori, but none came. She didn't know whether that was good, or just a sign that worse was coming.

The descent ended abruptly, and the stairwell they were following bottomed out into a rough hewn, or possibly naturally formed negative space like a cave. The light was low, barely there, but the walls and ceiling, high, high, above, glittered with the faint fire of many raw occluded gemstones. It was like she'd stepped into another world at the core of Hueco Mundo. Maybe she had. If Hueco Mundo even had a core. It had felt flat and endless to her until now, just an infinite line of sand pouring through a broken hourglass.

Ulquiorra led her across the cavern and Kido lanterns flared green in the blackness of a long corridor, stretching into an unknown distance, and Orihime glanced around, squinting. Had she been here before? But no, she would have remembered the gemstone cave. Ulquiorra stopped at the entrance, a massive archway, and turned to her abruptly.

"You have not been keeping your own counsel, have you?" he asked.

What?" Orihime shook her head. "What are you talking about? And where are we?"

Ulquiorra sighed. "That's what I thought." Orihime watched, baffled, as Ulquiorra sat down cross-legged on the ground. She could only stare at him as he gestured for her to sit opposite him. She continued to stand, and crossed her arms. "Very well," he said, and, for some reason, began to call up reels of footage.

"What are you doing?" Orihime asked, drawing back as she saw one she didn't recognize. One of herself, standing in the fireplace room. With Aizen. She flinched away and looked to another. This one was a view of the desert just outside Las Noches. A few others sprang to life, some of which she recognized as various points in her travels with Grimmjow.

"Do you recognize these?" Ulquiorra asked.

"No. Not all of them."

"As I suspected," he said softly. "I have no choice then, but to offer you context for yesterday."

"I don't need—"

"Would you prefer to be miserable?" Ulquiorra cut her off. "To be confused and angry? Or will you let me help you?"

The question was so deeply unexpected that Orihime almost sat down.

"You told me you couldn't tell me anymore," she said quietly. "You said it was—his prerogative."

"It is, however, there are times when a subordinate must take steps to protect the leader, and act alone. In exchange for this favor, however, I will require your discretion."

Orihime looked away from the paused stills of the footage, and back at Ulquiorra. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Are you saying you're—going behind his back right now?"

"You can no longer say Lord Aizen's name," Ulquiorra said abruptly, and Orihime flinched. "You had been so eager to see him before, yet you would not look at him after the incident yesterday. Why?"

Orihime's jaw became too tight to speak. She shook her head, her whole body recoiling.

"Tell me."

"No," she said, shaking. "It's none of your business."

"Tell me what you saw."

"Stop it!" Orihime snarled at him, and almost reached for Tsubaki and her shields. "None of you own me—not you, not—him."

She waited for the storm, for the breathtaking intensity of Ulquiorra's reiatsu—but it didn't come. Nothing came. Ulquiorra simply looked at her.

"I do not wish you to experience more of what you did before," he said at last, and Orihime had to drop his gaze. "I would like to ease your mind, somewhat, before you try to heal him again. For his sake, and yours."

"I don't need your pity," Orihime snapped. "And I'm not interested in any more illusions. I'll heal him because Grimmjow asked me to. Not for anyone else."

Ulquiorra looked at her for another little while. "Then perhaps you will allow me to correct some misunderstandings—"

"There's nothing to misunderstand," Orihime growled. "I tried to trust him, and he—he _used_ me—" She couldn't say it. Why couldn't she just say it?

"He did not."

"That's not your place to decide, Uli," Orihime said through her teeth. "You couldn't understand, anyway—"

The reel of footage, the still of the fireplace room, suddenly began to play, and the roar of the fire cut through Orihime's voice. The image was bright, almost real. She could have reached out to touch it. But she didn't want to touch it. She didn't even want to look at it.

Aizen was standing a few paces away from her, leaning thoughtfully against the fireplace, arms crossed, but then he stood up, and they squared off like they were about to box. Orihime looked like she used to: long hair, wide eyes, bouncy breasts. But no—her eyes were different. Harder already, even before desert journey. They searched Aizen's face, wary but unafraid, as he stepped toward her.

"Tell me," he prompted, and she remained silent.

Now-Orihime began to shake. This was it. She was about to watch what she'd seen in her head. She couldn't—she couldn't watch—but she had no choice. She had too many questions. _Where were my shields?_ she thought desperately. Where was Tsubaki? Her clips were right there in her hair where they always were. Why wasn't she doing something? Anything? She couldn't look away, even though a pressure in her chest—the scream from yesterday—was stirring, trying to move her body again. It was panicking, trying to make her look away, trying to force her head to turn, her eyes to close—

"Tell me to stop," Aizen said, and reached for her. She looked at his hand, and Orihime felt her heart race with anticipation.

"Is this another test?" Then-Orihime asked, skeptical. She licked her lips.

"If you like," Aizen said coolly, and took another step. His hand touched her face, and slipped around to her hair. "But it doesn't have to be."

Orihime's breath ran short—she could feel that hand on her now. It felt—so good—

Her eyes fluttered. So did Then-Orihime's.

"Tell me to stop," Aizen said again. His voice was deep and raw…but soft. His lips looked soft, too. His other hand ran along her jaw, angling her face up toward his. His eyes drifted down to her lips. Then-Orihime said nothing, but Now-Orihime's eyes went wide, riveted, as Then-Orihime's lips parted delicately with a gentle inhalation, and her eyes closed. She pushed her face against his hand, and a tiny whimper, a caught breath—a caught breath that Now-Orihime felt in her own chest—and then—

 _Aizen's mouth was warm on hers, and she wrapped her hands in his silver-white robes, tugging him against her. Desire so strong it was pain shot through her stomach, and heat pooled between her legs. She clung to him, knees weak, when he pulled away._

 _"Tell me to stop, Ori," Aizen murmured again, and ran his nose along hers. That single lock of hair that always hung over his face tickled her forehead._

 _She was breathing hard, her chest was hot with a flush like she'd never felt before, not even when she'd kissed Ichigo goodbye—_

 _Aizen's body pressed against hers, and she leaned in, aching for contact. His fingers ran through her hair._

 _"Tell me," he whispered, as she pulled herself against him. He was warm, and he smelled so good, and it had been so long since anyone had held her, even touched her—not even Tatsuki had held her hand in months—she'd said Ori was too angry. She was afraid, but she wouldn't run from what she wanted anymore._

 _"No," she said, through gritted teeth. "I don't want you to stop."_

Orihime's hands clenched in the fabric of her skirt as heat lanced down to her core. She moaned sharply, unprepared for the sudden swell of sensation, but the sound was filled with unmistakable need. Her hand flew to her mouth as she heard it, and she flushed in embarrassment as she remembered that Ulquiorra was sitting beside her, watching her reaction with evident curiosity.

"Turn it off," she gasped, but then shuddered and sank to the floor as Then-Orihime's back hit the wall of the fireplace room like it had in her memory—

 _Her back hit the wall, but her head was cradled by Aizen's hand as he kissed her deeply, and then his fingers ran down her throat, between her breasts, along her stomach, and began to draw her skirt slowly up along one leg. She cried out in desperation, back arching at his touch against her bare skin, and her nails raked over his shoulders and chest, searching for something—_

"I said turn it off—" Orihime choked on the words as she saw a flash of light on the screen, and Tsubaki flew at last—but only to slice once through Aizen's clothing, which Then-Orihime proceeded to tear away herself, shivering as her hands raced over his body. Aizen groaned heatedly as his hands coasted over her hips, and Now-Orihime watched with rising disbelief as he picked her up and pressed her against the wall, kissing her neck—her skirt hitched up, her legs wrapped around his hips, and she moaned his name as he—

"Oh, my god, Uli, please turn it off," Orihime begged, and finally was able to turn away. Her shaking hands were on her burning face, but the image finally paused in the air between them. She took a long moment, trying to breathe, trying to think, trying not to cry, trying not to moan. "Why would you—how could you show me this?"

"Does this not put your mind at ease?" he asked, and Orihime sobbed, then laughed manically into her hands.

"Why would it?" she demanded. "It's just an illusion—"

"It is not."

Orihime spun on him again. "I remembered this yesterday," she snarled. "You asked what I saw. I saw this. I saw it—I felt it—he—Aizen—"

"Lord Aizen did not rape you."

"Dammit, Uli, say that again and I'll—"

"The girl in that footage is not you," Ulquiorra said flatly.

Orihime stared at him. "I thought you said it wasn't an illusion."

"It is not. My perception may be affected by Lord Aizen's illusive powers, but for better or worse, my eyes can record only the material truth, in the same way that our hands will interact with only the material truth."

"Then—what—" Orihime looked back at the screen, hands wheeling in confusion. "Am I going crazy then?"

"I am not sure, but for all intents and purposes, if you cannot recall this scene unprompted, nor with clarity or consistency, it must not have happened to you."

"Then why can I remember it at all, if it wasn't me?"

"Do you remember it?" Ulquiorra asked, watching her carefully.

"In pieces, yes."

"Visuals, or viscerals?"

"Both—"

"Please consider carefully," Ulquiorra admonished. "I could see that you recalled some…sensations just now, but I suspect they were different than what you experienced initially, when you attempted to heal Lord Aizen."

Orihime considered. It was difficult to trust any of her memories, or memories of her discovering those memories, under such scrutiny.

"I reacted differently this time," she said honestly. "When I first saw it, when I was healing Aizen, there was no context. Mental or physical, and some of the conversation may have been missing. My feelings, I think, were a reaction to that. I didn't feel the—" she paused, awkward. "I didn't feel the same—"

"Desire."

Orihime flinched. "Whatever's going on here, I feel weird talking about it with you."

"Why?"

"Because you can't guess why it's weird."

"Fair enough," Ulquiorra said, unbothered. "It is true that I lack much of the human sense of propriety you hold in such high regard. But I should think that would only make it easier to discuss for you, in some ways."

Orihime wanted to argue with this, but it was true that Ulquiorra's clinical, robotic manner should have made him the obvious choice for candid discussions of just how confused and aroused she'd been watching that scene play out.

"So—" she shook her head, relenting. "Alright, so what do you think is happening to me?"

"I have been developing some theories," Ulquiorra said. "But it would be inappropriate to state them all at this time."

"Not this shit again," Orihime said under her breath.

"You must be patient." Ulquiorra's eyes were stern. "You are currently in a highly suggestible state. My theories are just that: theories. I told you before to keep your own counsel—even that much may have been a mistake. If you have an emerging second personality, as it seems you must, it would b unwise to…poke at it without due consideration and recourse."

"But what if it happens again?" Orihime asked. "Next time I heal Aizen, what if I see more of this?"

Ulquiorra shook his head. "I think we can assume that it may. It may take a toll on you, as well, but he must be stabilized again, and brought back to full capacity as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we can only attempt to mitigate the damage you sustain."

Orihime sighed through her nose. "I don't like the sound of that."

"But it remains the case. The consequences of failure would be catastrophic, to both our worlds."

Orihime thought of Grimmjow's comment, which she'd barely processed as more than a threat in the moment yesterday. If he dies, everything dies with him. Including you.

Orihime nodded reluctantly. If nothing else, she would trust Grimmjow. For now. Ulquiorra stood up and helped her to her feet.

"Is it enough, for now, to apply some context?" Ulquiorra asked. He asked it like he really wanted to know.

"I guess it has to be," Orihime said. The voice in her chest was quiet, thank God.

"There is one more thing," Ulquiorra said, and for once displayed some genuine discomfort. "If Lord Aizen addresses you, and you suspect he is addressing the other you, I must ask that you…play along." He looked away when Orihime's eyes narrowed.

"How far along?" she asked.

"All the way along." Ulquiorra finally met her eyes. "If your memories pertaining to him have been portioned off somehow, it would likely only complicate the healing process."

Orihime became very still. "I'm not giving up what little peace of mind I have left to keep him—sated—"

"It is about far more than that," Ulquiorra stated curtly. "Can you imagine what would happen if the court of Espada were to get wind of his condition? Of yours?"

"I really can't," Orihime said, rolling her eyes. "Why don't you tell me?"

"There would be an insurrection of devastating proportions," Ulquiorra said, and Orihime's chest clenched. "Aizen would be deposed, and the Espada would run rampant with the power he has granted them. Grimmjow and I are not nearly enough to hold them all at bay. You would likely be the first to die, but you would be followed by many, many more."


End file.
